Saturday, January 20, 2018

The beginnings of Camp Kiesel: Four different sites considered


                                                  The open area at Camp Kielsel.

CAMP Kiesel is a household word among Boy Scouts in the Ogden, Utah area. A popular day camp, this facility dates back to 1925 and mostly serves Cub Scouts today.
However, four different sites to considered as possible locations before the South Fork "narrows" location was selected.
According to the Ogden Standard-Examiner of Feb. 27, 1925, possible camps sites were also debated, including ones along the North Fork and the Middle Fork of the Ogden River.

                           Water sports at the south end of Camp Kiesel.

The camp was to be named in honor of the late Fred J. Kiesel. He was a former Ogden City Mayor and is family had donated $3,500 toward a future Boy Scout camp east of Ogden. ($3,500 is almost $50,000 in today's 2018 dollar values.)
Back then, it wasn't the Trapper Trails Boy Scout Council that operated in the Ogden area, it was called the Ogden Gateway Council of Boy Scouts of America. 
According to the Salt Lake Telegram newspaper of May 13, 1925, a committee of businessmen (C. B. Empey, W.H. Shearman, Gus Wright, A.P. Merrill,  J.W. Ellington and John L. Taylor) made the site selection, whose location was about a mile north of the South fork "narrows" and near what was called "Big Spring," at the junction of Spring Canyon and Wheatgrass Canyon.

                            A typical outdoor class at Camp Keisel.

Then, an architect began to make plans for the site.
Development moved quickly and the camp first opened in June of 1925, with 60 Boy Scouts there on opening day. 
Camp Kiesel was officially dedicated on July 5, 1925, and a shooting expo was one of its initial grand-opening features.

                                           The BB gun shooting range at Camp Kiesel.

3 comments:

  1. thanks for your article,i have three patches from camp kiesel, but they say ogden area council on them,can you give me any info on ogden area council?thanks so much...dan douglass 1 435 241 8867... segolily2@comcast.net

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  2. thanks Lynn, are you around Ogden and involved in Scouts and the Council?

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  3. I live in Layton now, but grew up in the Bonneville Scout Council, went to Camp Kiesel in the 1960s and later with some of my sons.

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