By SUSAN TEBBEN
GLASGOW — Benny Dickinson plans to keep the legacy of the Boy Scouts going just as his predecessors and some of the founders of the original Boy Scouts did in the early 1900s.
The lower cabin at the Rotary Scout Reservation Foundation, Inc. campgrounds, which he helped found and of which he remains the secretary-treasurer, will be rebuilt in the same way that it was originally built before fire destroyed it in late 2009.
“We started with 30 acres, and now we have over 200 to use,” Dickinson, a former Barren County district and circuit judge, said. “Scouting has been very strong in Glasgow and it will continue to be.”
Ever since the Boy Scouts began they were chartered by the United States Congress in 1910, Kentucky has been a central hub for Scouting. The first ever Boy Scout troop was in Burnside, and just a few years later, in 1912, a troop was started in Glasgow.
According to Dickinson, who has kept an extensive history of local Scouting since he was one himself in the 1950s, William Henry Jones started the first troop in Glasgow when he went to Louisville, where a Boy Scout rally was being conducted. They were offering a pair of boots to every child that started a troop. Jones met Dan Beard, founder of U.S. Scouting and resident of Covington at the rally. Beard would also gain national recognition as the illustrator of the first edition of Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer.”
Interest in the Scouts waned in the late ‘20s when the National Guard started offering $1 per night to drill and boys were allowed to join at the age of 15, but popularity returned soon after.
Glasgow’s first Scout Master was the Rev. Harvey Baker Smith, a minister at the First Christian Church, according to the Daily Times archives. In the early history of Scouting, Glasgow’s troop was No. 1, until, in 1930, troops began to be numbered by district, giving Glasgow No. 212.
Around that same time, Brother Ed Alderson of the church joined with a group of Scouts to start a move for a permanent camp. Early camping had been done at Covered Bridge near Prospect, even before all the roads to Louisville had been paved, according to Dickinson.
In 1931, the Scouts purchased 30.5 acres for $650, including a house on the land, from George and Fannie Page, two former slaves. The first troops worked the land, creating a road to it and making the land productive for camping and learning about the wilderness.
Some of the Scouts from the first troop went to the national jamboree in 1937 in Washington, D.C., (scheduled for 1935 before an outbreak of polio) to visit with Scouts around the country and present their troop.
Two years after building the upper cabin on their new land, a log cabin was moved to the camp by employees of the Coca-Cola plant. Cornerstones were laid by Cal Rogers, Lewis Dickinson, J.D. Deweese and Joe Lewis Goodman, some of whom had intended to go to the cancelled jamboree.
From there, the following continued to grow. A second cabin came from the Wood Hall Ranch on Barren River, which is now underneath the Barren River. In 1948 and ‘49 the camp was used as a council camp and the land was converted to tent camping land in 1953.
After decades of use, in the middle to late ‘80s, an effort was made to renovate the lower cabin, a project that would take an estimated $4,000. J. Wood “Boots” Vance, a former Scout who would become very instrumental in keeping the Scouts in Glasgow, paid for some of the renovation. When the land they used for camping went up for auction after the owners died, Dickinson and Jimmy Simmons approached Vance again, who offered to buy 146 acres for $166,500 in November 1987.
The deed was made out to the Rotary Club, which would eventually become the Rotary Scout Reservation, Inc. on Jan. 20, 1988, according to Dickinson’s records.
They continued their community and environmental work by contracting with the state Division of Forestry, the Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Soil Conservation Service for cost sharing to develop a Forest Stewardship Plan. This would help improve the land by planting corn, wheat, autumn olive and other annual grasses. They also created a recreation trail and instituted programs for forest management.
The scouts made another contract with the Amish to help with the removal of silos and renovation of a tobacco barn.
It is through these efforts that current locals have been able to appreciate Boy Scouts. One of these is Glasgow attorney Ken Garrett, who was a Boy Scout for seven years, and became an Eagle Scout.
“It definitely taught me leadership skills so that I know how to motivate people, plus organizational skills,” Garrett said.
He and Dickinson are not worried about the new technology and modern distractions taking away from boys’ interest in Scouting.
“I don’t think [Scouting] will be replaced, boys have a natural affinity for the outdoors,” Garrett said.
Dickinson points to himself as proof that Scouting can’t be replaced.
“I’m a life-long Boy Scout,” he said. “These are values you take away and use your whole life, so that’s why boys still do it. And to be able to just get out in the woods and swim and fish, that never gets old.”
