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From the Star Ledger, 2/6/02 Bergen buys a piece of Scouting history $5.1 million deal will make Camp Glen Gray in Ramapo Mountains a park
Wednesday, February 06, 2002 BY BRIAN T. MURRAY Star-Ledger Staff Smoldering campfires, cheering children and the splash of canoe paddles will still fill the mountain air around Bergen County's Vreeland Lake, although it's reign as one of the nation's oldest Boy Scout camps ended yesterday. The 750-acre Camp Glen Gray, once a forested jewel of the Boy Scouts of America, was purchased yesterday by Bergen County under a deal that will make it a public park and part of 13,400 contiguous protected acres in the Ramapo Mountains. The Northern New Jersey Council of the Boy Scouts of America will get $5.1 million in the deal. The Scouts are not completely pulling up stakes, however. The sale, brokered by the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, preserves the rights of Scouts to pitch tents at Camp Glen Gray just as they have since it was established in 1917 by "Uncle" Frank Fellows Gray, a founding father of American Scouting. Girl Scouts also will be able to use the site, which will become Bergen County's first public overnight camping facility. "I think we were very fortunate," said John Hartinger, chairman of the Friends of Glen Gray, a splinter group of Northern New Jersey Council that fought to keep the land open to Scouting, if not under Boy Scout ownership. "Today we are not just celebrating the preservation of nature. We are preserving our natural heritage that was granted to us by our fathers and grandfathers -- the heritage that we now pass on to our grandchildren and great-grandchildren," said Bergen County Executive William "Pat" Schuber during a ceremony at the camp yesterday morning. The deal gives Friends of Glen Gray a management role, responsible for maintaining about 20 log cabins at the camp, administering overnight stays and scheduling outdoor events. It is an arrangement born out of a bitter battle that had pitched Scout leader against Scout leader inside the Northern New Jersey Council when its executive board first voted to sell the camp last year. Although supporters of Camp Glen Gray had incorrectly identified the site as the oldest operating Scout camp in the nation, it is arguably the oldest camp operated by a New Jersey Scouting organization. Treasure Island Scouting Camp, located in the Delaware River on the New Jersey side, was established in 1913, but it is operated by a Philadelphia organization. Scout historians rank Camp Glen Gray, which straddles Mahwah and Oakland, among the six oldest camps in the nation. About 8,000 Scouts from the Northern New Jersey Council use the camp annually. "Selling Glen Gray was a very difficult decision, but I think it was a sound management decision. No one wanted to see the camp sold," said Northern New Jersey Council member Howard Tober, 76, as he walked through the camp he first visited as a Boy Scout in 1937. The decision to sell was a matter of financial pressure, which is affecting all Boy Scout organizations. With 40,000 Scouts, the Northern New Jersey Council formed in 1999 when money and resources forced old Scouting councils in Essex, Bergen, Hudson and Passaic counties to merge and pool their assets. Camp Glen Gray followed the Essex council into the merger, and the new council had to decide how to manage nine camping facilities. Council mergers and the selling of camps have become a national trend for Boy Scout organizations in their struggle for financial survival. The controversy over a national ban on gays in the Boy Scouts only added to years of already declining private donations, further pressuring Scouts from California and Texas to Indiana and New York to sell land. "I think the biggest problem is that years ago people gave us these lands, but over the years people have not given us the financial donations necessary to maintain the camps," said Frank Pedone, vice president of operations and programs in the Northern New Jersey Council. "We didn't want to sell, but we had to. Unfortunately, we may see more of it nationally. But the money we make from this sale will enable the Scouts to improve our other eight facilities and better serve future Scouts," he added. Many Northern New Jersey Council members feared that selling the camp would mean dealing away the group's sovereignty because Camp Glen Gray was one of three council-owned camps in New Jersey. The council owns a Pennsylvania camp and two tracts in New York, but leases its other New Jersey sites. One of the leased sites, Camp Yawpaw in Bergen County, also may be bought by the county. Still, all sides involved in the Camp Glen Gray battle are united in the comfort that the land is not falling into the hands of developers. "This is a day I have looked forward to for many years. Since I first set foot on this land several years ago, I have dreamed of the day we could lock away the treasures of this forest and keep them safe forever from bulldozers and subdivisions," Schuber said. "We tried to find a solution that would somehow help to preserve Scouting at Glen Gray as well as the land," Hartinger said. "I think this unique private-public partnership will work well." The state Department of Environmental Protection furnished $2.7 million for the county's purchase of Camp Glen Gray through a Green Acres grant. The county added $2.1 million, and more than $250,000 was provided by the Trust for Public Lands through private donations. |
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