The council was renamed the Mount Diablo Council in 1951. The Mount Diablo Silverado Council was formed in 1992 as the result of a merger between the former Silverado Area Council and the former Mount Diablo Council. The current Herms District is believed to have been formed in 1975 from the merger of two districts (one being the Berkeley District). The Golden Gate Area Council was formed in 2020.
For more history see:
Lindbald, Victor. 196-?, History of Mt. Diablo Council Boy Scouts of America held by University of California Bancoft Library (original), Berkeley, and the council office (tissue copy).
Lindbald, Victor. 1958, Some Historical Data on Camp Herms
The Berkeley Boy Scout Hut in John Hinkel Park is one of John Hinkel’s many contributions to Boy Scouts.
More: Berkeley Scout Hut and John Hinkel Park History
David Prescott Barrows was born in Chicago, June 27, 1873. His life was rich and full, and before his death on September 5, 1954, he was accorded many honors in recognition of distinguished service rendered not only to his own countrymen but to other governments and peoples.
Though of New England ancestry, he was born in Chicago, and grew up on a ranch in California in an era before the automobile had supplanted the horse, and a growing urban civilization had become less sensitive to the values of the homely frontier virtues of personal integrity, and moral and physical courage. To be honorable and straightforward in his dealings with all men, and to be courageous in defending what he believed to be right, whatever the effect on his personal fortunes, were characteristics which David Barrows exhibited throughout life.
After graduation from Pomona College in 1894, he continued his studies in the fields of anthropology and political science at the University of California, at Columbia, and at the University of Chicago, where in 1897 he was awarded the Ph.D. degree in anthropology at the age of twenty-four. His dissertation on “The Ethno-Botany of the Cohuilla Indians” was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1900. It was later to be praised by a distinguished American anthropologist as a sound scientific treatise and, additionally, as “one of the most human doctor's dissertations ever written.” In the meantime, young Barrows had accepted a teaching position at San Diego State College, where he remained for two years before being called to other service for which his temperament and training ideally fitted him.
William Howard Taft, President of the Philippine Commission, appointed the youthful Barrows Superintendent of Schools in Manila. During the following nine years he made noteworthy contributions to the improvement and extension of education in the Archipelago, to an understanding of the special difficulties presented by the diverse ethnic elements, and finally to the stabilization of relations with the various primitive tribes. In 1903 he was appointed General Superintendent of Education for the Islands, and instituted much-needed reforms before his resignation in 1909. During this period, he traveled throughout the Archipelago, and became closely acquainted with the pagan and Mohammedan as well as the Christian elements of the population. Important by-products of these nine years of intimate experience and diligent study were a number of articles containing valuable anthropological data, and an authoritative volume, A History of the Philippines.
While still in the Philippine service, Barrows had been invited by the University of California to spend the Spring Semester of 1907 as Lecturer in Anthropology. Two years later he was called to return to the University and, after relinquishing his post in the Islands, became Professor of Education in 1910 and, in the following year, Professor of Political Science. His advancement was rapid. He became Dean of the Graduate School in 1911, Dean of the Faculties in 1912, and Acting President of the University during 1912-1913. In 1919, he succeeded Benjamin Ide Wheeler as President and served until 1923. His resignation and return to the Department of Political Science as its Chairman gave him a coveted freedom to travel and write, as well as teach, and to undertake various public services to the state and nation.
The military phase of Barrows' career held an interest for him perhaps as great as anything in his life. A tall, handsome man of erect carriage and distinguished bearing, he was, indeed, “to the manner born.” Like Theodore Roosevelt, whose martial fervor, resolute spirit, and love of the strenuous life aroused his admiration, Barrows, though given to wide reading and fruitful reflection, was notably a forthright man of decision and action rather than of cloistered thought. And like T. R., he believed that nations, like men, should be trust-worthy, and strong in resistance to injustice.
Stirred deeply by events in Europe after the outbreak of World War I, Barrows embraced the first opportunity presented by the Citizens' Military Training Camps to acquire military experience, and then became the moving spirit in organizing and training volunteers from among the students and younger faculty members at the University. Many of these were later to serve as officers after the United States entered the war. Barrows himself was commissioned a major in the Reserve Corps of the United States Army in 1916. Later he was to become commanding officer of the 91st Division and was ordered to the Philippines in January, 1918. In the same year he became intelligence officer of the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia, serving until March, 1919. Perhaps from this first-hand acquaintance with the Bolsheviks, he foresaw earlier than most the danger of the spread of conspiratorial communism, and was to fight it from this time forward. Continuing his interest in military affairs, he participated after World War I in the reorganization of the 159th Infantry, California National Guard, and became its commander. This was followed by his appointment as commander of the 40th Division, which included the states of California, Nevada, and Utah. In 1926 he was commissioned by the President as a major general of the Army of the United States.
A warm-hearted man, sensitive to human needs, and innately generous, Barrows was sought for various forms of public service, and always responded as far as possible to every demand. We list but a few. In 1916 he served under Herbert Hoover as a member of the American Relief Service in Belgium. From 1929 to 1933 he was President of the Board of Trustees of California College in China. In 1931 he was a member of the American Delegation to the Pan American Commercial Congress in Washington. In the same year he was appointed a Trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. During 1933-1934 he served as Theodore Roosevelt Professor at the University of Berlin.
Barrows was an eager and observant traveler, making frequent trips to Asia and to various Central American, Caribbean, and South American countries, where he lectured in 1928 as Carnegie Visiting Professor of International Relations. In 1923-1924 he visited Europe, and then led a strenuous expedition 2,500 miles across a little known region of the French Sudan in the interior of Africa. The observations made and the anthropological and other data acquired on this trip were embodied in Berbers and Blacks, published in 1926.
Finally, though living life to the hilt as traveler, explorer, writer, educator, soldier, and good servant of all worthy causes, spiritually Barrows lived close to the members of his family. They could always rely upon his love and protection. To them and to all who knew him best, he was the “veray parfit gentil Knight.”
F. M. Russell W. G. Donald E. Neuhaus
More: http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb6r29p0fn&chunk.id=div00002,http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/~ucalhist/general_history/overview/presidents/index.html#barrows (with photo)
The “Herms District” and “Camp William B. Herms” (now “Camp Herms”, previously named “Camp Berkeley”) are named after Professor Emeritus (University of California at Berkeley) and Lieutenant-Colonel (U.S. Army) William (“Billy”) Brodbeck Herms (1876-1949). He was a founding Berkeley Council Executive Board Member (in 1916) and also the Council President (1926-1949). He was one of the first Advisors (along with Victor Lindbald) for the Gamma Gamma Chapter of Alpha Phi Omega National Service Fraternity at the University of California at Berkeley. More:http://www.bsa-mdsc.org/node/166/william-b-herms-biography
In 1926 Fleet Admiral (then Commander) Chester W. Nimitz became the first Professor of Naval Science and Tactics for the ROTC Unit at the University of California at Berkeley. He was a professor at the University of California for about 3 years. During that period he was one of the founders of Sea Scouting in the Berkeley Council. More: http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq36-4.htm
In addition to being a Scout Leader, Professor Sproul was a honorary member and pledge class namesake of the Gamma Gamma Chapter of Alpha Phi Omega at the University of California at Berkeley. In his May 7, 1958, letter to the chapter (when President of the University) he wrote:
I was a scoutmaster and a volunteer scout executive in the 1920’s, and I am now a member of the National Council and a Beaver Scout, or as my Eagle Scout son labels it, a “Stuffed Shirt Scout!” Be this as it may, I am deeply interested in what all Scout organizations do, including Alpha Phi Omega, and especially because they do it so well.
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gordon_Sproul,http://www.pastleaders.ucla.edu/sproul.html (with photo),http://www.rca.ucsd.edu/speeches/sproul.pdf (PDF),http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/~ucalhist/general_history/overview/presidents/index2.html#sproul (with photo), Sproul 1958 letter: Sproul-letter-19580507
Alpha Phi Omega was formed as a separate organization in 1925 at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. It is the largest co-educational student community service organization in the United States of America with over 400 thousand members since its founding and over 360 chapters nation-wide. The National Council of the Boy Scouts of America recognized Alpha Phi Omega as the “National Honorary Scout Fraternity” in 1932. The Gamma Gamma Chapter at the University of California, Berkeley, was founded in 1939. More: http://www.apo.org/, http://www.calaphio.com/.