Wolfeboro 2019 was amazing!

For generations, Scouts have made the pilgrimage to Camp Wolfeboro to experience the joys of an old-fashioned summer camp. It’s a place where Scouting traditions are of great consequence, and the ghosts of Wolfeboro’s venerable Pioneers are with every day!

Camp Wolfeboro was founded by the former Berkeley Council in 1928 in the area known as Hell’s Kitchen, across the river from a family-oriented camp, Camp Baxter. It is located on the north fork of the Stanislaus River near Bear Valley. The council leases the land from the United States Forest Service. Camp Baxter later closed down and its property was absorbed by Camp Wolfeboro, who built camp sites and remodeled the dining hall and medical shack into a nature lodge and hike shack. Not much has changed at Wolfeboro since then.

The ancient Dining Hall is a reminder of a time when Scouts said Grace before meals, removed their hats indoors, and cheered themselves hoarse, and so what if they have to sit on wooden benches. Add to that a caring, enthusiastic, interactive staff that helps you with your summer camp goals and you get an unbeatable Scouting experience.

The troop campsite is the heart of the program and the staff is available to help you with advancement, high adventure outings, developing better leaders, or just setting a fishing line and breathing pristine mountain air. This season offers six sessions of the Wolfeboro experience that will challenge and inspire everyone who attends.

And then there is the lake. Screams, bribes, curses, threats, boasts, and an occasional splash are the sounds of the waterfront. The Wolfeboro Swim Test is where the “men” are separated from the “boys” in one slow, numbing, breath-taking plunge. Described as the “coldest water on the planet” by experienced campers, it is not unusual to see Scoutmasters chasing hysterical little Scouts around the small beach area, yelling at them to get into line for their swim test.

The camp is rich in traditions such as the “Wolfeboro Rassle” quick skits at each morning’s flag assembly to present the week-long theme culminating in a campwide game Thursday, with concluding skits at the final campfire on Friday evening. Wolfeboro has enough history and grandeur to warrant a visit amongst the beauty of the Sierras.

Camp Wolfeboro was established first as Camp Wolfboro by the Berkeley Council of the Boy Scouts of America in 1928. The story goes that Berkeley Troop 24 had camped there during the previous summer and reported its suitability as a campsite (Wolfeboro Pioneers Scrapbooks). Unlike organization camps in other areas of the Stanislaus National Forest, Wolfboro was established in an area, now called the Sand Flat Tract, which apparently was not part of a recreation residence tract; Conners did not mention this location in her “Historical Overview of Recreation Residences on the Stanislaus National Forest” (1993). The earliest Forest Service map labels the area as Sand Flat but depicts only a trail from the highway. The trail began at Big Meadow, where there was a public campground and summer residences, and according to Conners, functioned as a “stock driveway”; its course does not correspond to the current route of Forest Road 7N02 that serves the camp. The 1927 Forest map shows a public campground in the current location of the Forest Service’s Sand Flat campground, which remains adjacent to Camp Wolfeboro. The Ebbetts Pass Highway was also known as Forest Road 35 and was added to the State Highway system as Highway 4 in 1909. Though it is shown as a major road on the 1916 map, Conners reports that by 1926 only the portion between Murphys and Calaveras Big Trees was improved, and the improved sections extended only as far east as Dorrington by 1931; road “improvements” consisted of adding crushed rock to the surface and treating with oil. The road was treated with oil only in selected sections beyond Dorrington, but apparently it was good enough that well-to-do summer vacationers from Sacramento and the Bay Area were attracted to lodgings at Lake Alpine.

Though the original permit was not discovered in the current research, the 1950 permit located in the Calaveras Ranger District’s files references it specifically as being issued on February 29, 1928, for Lot 2 on the north side of the North Fork Stanislaus River. A separate camp—Camp Baxter, founded in 1926—is depicted south of the river on the camp map found in the Wolfeboro Pioneers scrapbook. The Wolfeboro Pioneers recall it as a “family camp” but a paragraph in the 1950 Wolfeboro permit indicates that it belonged to the Boy Scouts San Joaquin Council. The Forest Service Special Use Permit finalizing the addition was fully executed on February 1, 1950. The new permit stated:

This permit cancels and supersedes the permit for Lot #2, Sand Flat Tract, designated “U-Uses – Berkeley Boy Scouts – Organization Site, 2/29/28; and also the permit for Lots #1, #3, and #4, Sand Flat Tract, designated “U-Uses – San Joaquin Boy Scouts –Organization Site – 1/24/26 (Forest Service Calaveras District, Special Use Files).

The Stockton Council was founded in 1918, changing its name in 1922 to San Joaquin, and again in 1929 to the San Joaquin-Calaveras Council. In 1957, the San Joaquin-Calaveras Council changed its name to the Forty Niner Council; the Forty Niner and the Greater Yosemite (formerly Stanislaus) councils merged in 1997. An interesting feature of the 1950 permit was the prohibition on animals in the camp without a special, separate permit allowing them, given that a longstanding feature of the early camp were the famous “Wolf-burros” that enabled extended backpacking trips into the wilderness; the summit of Dardanelles Cone was a favorite destination. The location of the burros’ corral was described in various locations through the years, from very near the original Dining Hall/Lodge/Program Building to the area of today’s Rifle Range, and later, south of the river near the Hike Shack/Trailhead department. The burros are no longer part of the camp program.