SCOUTING YESTERDAY | Boy Scouts build high-price training camp in Black Hills

This week in South Dakota history: Feb. 21-27

Scouts canoeing on Lake Alexander at Medicine Mountain Scout Ranch. Photo: South Dakota Department of Tourism.

The Black Hills Area Boy Scout Council announced the largest undertaking in its history, according to an article published in the Rapid City Journal 50 years ago this week.

Debuting plans for a nearly $700,000 camp at Medicine Mountain that would end up taking three years to build, Council member Robert Dilly said, “It will be a ‘full-year’ camping, training and activities center for the 4,200 Scouts and leaders now enrolled, plus thousands more of future generations.”

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Surrounded by 1.3 million acres of national forest, the 160-acre camp sits 12 miles west-southwest of Hill City. Today, the cost of the project would be nearly $4 million.

The camp replaced Camp Old Broadaxe, which had served scouts since the mid 1930s after a study determined the cost of rehabilitating facilities there wouldn't be prudent. Broadaxe would not open again following groundbreaking of the new project.