Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Find A Scouting Museum

If you have an interest in the history of Scouting or think that you might enjoy seeing some of the artifacts of Scouting over the last 100 years, give some thought to visiting a Scouting museum. There are more than 80 museums across the United States that feature Scouting exhibits. To make it a little easier for you to find something close by, we have used Google's My Maps to produce an interactive map of these museums.


View Larger Map

Sunday, August 19, 2007

More Good Stuff from usscouts.org

Over the past several weeks you've probably noticed that we've been busy shifting from our old site design to a new site design that we hope will make it easier for you to get to the information you want. As we go, we are also doing some content updates and in some cases major ones. And we are also adding some new features. Here's a roundup of some recent site changes:

1. Scout Fact or Fiction

Visit http://usscouts.org/factfiction.asp to find out what is a myth and what is true when it comes to Scouting.

2. High Adventure

Visit http://usscouts.org/highadventure.asp and grab our new local Council high adventure programs spreadsheet to find out about high adventure opportunities you can use in your program.

3. Scout and Guide Museums

Visit http://usscouts.org/scoutmuseums.asp and you'll be able to find some neat places to visit that showcase collections of Scouting memorabilia and more. We have doubled the number of places listed and in most cases we have a link to a Google Map of the vicinity to help you find these places.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Scout Camps across the USA - Major Announcement





TOTALL UPDATED - - - - - Every Boy Scout Camp Property in America!


VISIT...... The U.S. Scouting Service Project's ScoutCamp.org website




We want to announce the completion of a major upgrade to ScoutCamp.org, a member website of the U.S. Scouting Service Project. This is the largest database of Scout Camp properties in the USA as well as other places that scout leaders have recommended other units consider visiting for campouts.

At ScoutCamp.org you can search, state by state for all council owned or operated properties, see maps, get weather forecasts, go to the council's web page for that camp, as well as other pages that have been developed for that camp and even post your own comments, critiques, and recommendations for any BSA Camps. We also have several hundred State Parks, National Parks, and other places with "scout camping areas" and other special places that Scouters have posted with their comments. There are even at least 21 Scout Unit owned camps & cabins that other troops can visit just like they could for any council owned camp.

The ScoutCamp.org website has been around for some time, some of you will remember Lloyd Dalton who really started the website about eight years ago. Since then it has become a part of the family of website at USSSP and grown to more than 1,200 camp listings. Today I just wrapped up about 200 hours over the past six weeks updated every Boy Scout Camp property in the nation.



As you know councils acquire & sell camps, and about 80% of them either changed a URL for their camp properties or finally got around to creating web pages for all of their camps since I completed the last major update in 2002. Even a majority of the some 200 State Parks, etc. on the site needed some edit modifications to their listings. Right now we have 817 BSA properties in the database but I am certain, even now, there are some we probably overlooked so I need the help of Scouters to visit the site and see if we got all of the details correct for the camps in your council.

What we have now is, hopefully, an up to date & accurate database of all of the Boy Scout operated camps in America. Hopefully all of you have been to at least one BSA property this summer, why not check out the site and post your own comment.

During this update I have also corrected the data for all Boy Scout Councils in the U.S. Scouting Service Project's ScoutSite search. Area Codes change, councils build new Service Centers, there have been about a half dozen council mergers over the past few years, and unfortunately nearly every month every few months at least one council will forget to renew their URL domain and they get cybersquatted with their URL domain getting hijacked so there is always at least one council out there that seems to be changing their website URL All of this has been updated as well.




What do we have at ScoutCamp.org? Here are the listings as we have them now:




  • Scout-owned or operated: 817 Camps

  • State Parks: 146

  • Other Camps: 48

  • Private for Profit Camps: 45

  • County Parks: 38

  • National Parks: 29

  • National Forest: 24

  • Unit-owned Camps 21

  • State Forests: 21

  • Historical Sites: 8

  • Military: 7

  • City Parks: 6

  • Learning For Life owned:: 2



We also have Camp stories, a list of O.A. Where to Go Camping Guides, and more items are planned!!! An O.A. Lodge considering a "Where to Go Camping" on-line guide could easily make ScoutCamp.org a part of that effort.

Please let me encourage you to visit ScoutCamp.org today and check out on any and all of your favorite camps as well as your comments on where you camped this summer and let us know if we got your council's total camp data correct & complete.



ED HENDERSON

Board Member: U.S. Scouting Service Project

ScoutCamp.org webmaster
BigEd@UsSCOUTS.org
http://usscouts.org/henderson.asp


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