Stuart/McDonald

Camp Stuart was opened in 1922, and was originally called Camp McDonald. The camp was originally named after the scout executive Louis L. McDonald, who was an important figure in the founding of camp. He actually interviewed locals to find the name “Owasippe” the previous year, though that is another story entirely. McDonald was renamed Camp Stuart in honor of R. Douglas Stuart, who had been president of the council for over 25 years when the camp was renamed. He was also a member of the family that owned the famous Quaker Oats company. In fact, it is a common assumption that the famous “Owasa-Meal”’s ubiquity throughout the years comes from the camp’s loyalty to the Quaker Oats company, but this is mostly just a colorful legend. Camp Stuart was located on the south side of Crystal Lake. It operated as a fully-staffed dining hall camp, with its mess hall being identical to the one at Camp West. 

The camp originally served the Southwest District scouts, but it would outgrow this concept and serve scouts from all over the chicagoland area. It had several structures unique to camp and would retain a remarkably similar layout throughout the years. A hand-drawn map from the early 1930s shows a Dining Hall and Showers, Hospital, Trading Post, Handicraft Cabin, Woodcraft Lodge, Zoo and the famous Blockhouse. Rather interestingly, the map is centered around the Merit Badge Lodge, which was a cabin built by scouts in 1916 before McDonald was even developed. As the name suggests, scouts would work on merit madges there in the early days, it also functioned as a mult-purpose space for camp events and lessons. A 1967 map of Camp Stuart shows much of the same, including the Blockhouse, Handicraft moving near the Blockhouse, Campcraft replacing Woocraft (the equivalent to scoutcraft), and the Merit Badge Lodge taking the place as the Office. The Dining Hall was identical to the one initially built at Camp West, and would remain standing until 1977, when it was cleared out. Throughout the 1970s, much of the aging infrastructure of the camp would be torn down or destroyed, including the Merit Badge Lodge in the early 1970s, and the Blockhouse in a storm in 1976. Stuart’s last year of operation was 1978, and all the land around Crystal Lake was sold to developers by the early 1980s, ending 70 years of camping history.