Introduction

In the Baltimore Area Council (BAC), professionals and volunteers alike have carefully delineated "natural areas" within the reservation where just such a "hands-off" policy has been practiced, as recommended by the foresters, for fifty years. Perhaps more importantly, no portions of the reservation larger than 9 acres have ever been sold or lost. This has been due to adequate council fund-raising and professional and volunteer long-term commitment, not short-term.

Many other Scout Councils have regrettably sold camps to developers in recent years. Not so with BCMSR. Why? Perhaps looking back at the 50 years that the camp has fully functioned, from 1948 to 1998, will provide some more answers. The underlying principal, however, appears to have been to first acquire and then retain 2,000 acres of wildlands that could be exploited for their educational value, wildlife observation, backpacking, hiking, and other challenges within the Boy Scout program.

Little did the founders know that by 1998 nearly every acre, whether in the core of camp or the increasingly vital "buffer" along the edges of camp, would be invaluable toward the success of the camp's program. Baltimore suburban development was pressuring the camp from every side in the 1990s. And Broad Creek's intact 2000 acres had become one of the last locations close to Baltimore that youths or adults could learn outdoor skills and absorb a wilderness, remote experience.

In the 1730s they and other tribes ceased to hunt here, turning to areas further west to avoid contact with white settlers who first appeared about this time. Also during the 1730s the oldest of the BCMSR hemlock trees still standing began growing. The stand includes the second biggest hemlock tree in Maryland.

The extensive OA Hill old growth hardwood forest began growing at least in 1740; all old trees were removed there in a secret and controversial 1981 logging operation. No logging operation even remotely similar has occurred since then.

That these trees began growing no earlier than the 1730s and 1740s may not be a coincidence The Susquehannocks burned the most poorly forested barrens to improve hunting. This includes the poorest barrens, the erratic strip of serpentine strata lying on the surface from Soldiers Delight northwest of Baltimore northeastward to the Nottingham and Chrome, Pennsylvania area just north of the Mason Dixon line. It would include much of Camp Oest, southern OA Hill, and most markedly the area known as The Pines.

The oldest documented BCMSR boundary is the line very close to the "Haunted House." It was first surveyed in 1719 as part of Clee Hill, an early, small 150 acre land grant from "his Lordship's (Lord Baltimore's) Land Office." The 314 acre 1746 Clee Hill Enlarged survey includes the boundary from near the Oest ranger's house to near the Haunted House in Cone and the first segment of the BCMSR boundary in Spencer. The odd bends of Day Rd. and Robinson Mill Rd. from south of Cramers Gap westward, then northward, then eastward halfway to Cunningham Branch exist because the roads were built along this 1746 boundary line near "Greencoate Cabbin Branch" in what was then Baltimore County. (The Haunted House boundary was the most difficult boundary to follow when BCMSR's 11.5 mile boundary was marked in 1986 for the first time (the corners were marked in 1947 with concrete.))

Lewes's Chance, the northwest Oest area, was leased in 1745 to a Nathan Rigby, who was probably related to Col. Rigby who built a house still standing three miles southeast of BCMSR in 1732 near the Susquehanna. Lafayette, after crossing the river at Bald Friar ford, quelled a mutiny while spending the night at Col. Rigby's house in 1781, "perhaps saving the American effort at Yorktown."

The Roads

The Green Stone Mill and Quarry was operated before the Civil War according to local tradition and definitely by the late 1860s, perhaps by the Havre Iron Company. In 1878 the Green Serpentine Marble Company of Harford County was incorporated and began operating the quarry in a large scale manner. Polishing tables were constructed on site, perhaps where 18 anchoring poles can still be found just north of the stone-walled waterwheel sluice. A "short railroad across Broad Creek on which they removed the refuse" was built, and some rails can still be seen on the abutments.

The July 1984 flood exposed much more of the wood, iron, and rock dam at the bend just below Deep Run on Broad Creek. The dam diverted water into the 1/3 mile millrace still very obvious today, past a leveled site just north of the quarry which reveals traces of the building that was there.

The largest building constructed of rock from this quarry was the Episcopal Grace Memorial Church in Darlington, Md. The ornamental polished "green marble" serpentine from this quarry was used in interiors of many New York city buildings. The Empire State and Library of Congress buildings have polished rock in their lobbies from this quarry or from those in nearby Whiteford, Md.

The Camp Cone area was growing by 1900. A structure which was a blacksmith shop or would become one was uphill west of the Cunningham's log cabin, and ruins are still present today. Two other structures were to the north. The Old Manor House Lane, now occupied by the Yellow Trail in part in Spencer, ran from Robinson Mill Rd. across the creek to the Manor House in Spencer. Frances Farnsworth, the great granddaughter of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and her husband used the Manor House and its many outbuildings prior to 1946 when sold to BAC; she returned in 1989 to visit. It and the Bar S are the only pre-camp structures still in use by BAC.

By 1900 a dirt road cut off the OA Rd. and ran up the pass between Finney and OA Hill, then south through the woods, then split to follow both OA Hill's eastern and southern ridges. The southern ridge road is still visible today, joining the Green Stone Quarry Rd. (Green Trail) at the little pond opposite Glades Creek. A number of mine diggings on the southeast side of OA Hill's southern ridge were possibly accessed from this road. The road from Finney to OA Hill apparently never existed until the controversial, secret BAC old growth logging of the 240 year-old hardwood forest on OA Hill in 1981. The camp's biggest mining pits other than Green Stone Quarry are in southern Oest near Robinson Mill Rd. The old road going to these white "flint" mines is also still clear today along the west side of Quarry Creek where the Green Trail followed it in the 1960s.

The camp's most extensive area of smaller pits, perhaps exploratory diggings, is in western Cone on North Clee Hill. Little else is known about these diggings. The Trenton Flint and Spar Company apparently took over the Green Stone Quarry until selling to H. Clay Whiteford on Valentine's Day 1907.

Most quarry operations probably ceased in the 1890s. Rails and structures there were not removed until probably around the 1924 date that H. Clay Whiteford sold the quarry and land to Philadelphia Electric ("The Susquehanna Power Company") which was acquiring land for the 1928 Conowingo Reservoir. The reservoir flooded the remote lower Broad Creek valley 1.7 miles to the BCMSR boundary.

The 1928 reservoir ended the large shad runs up the Susquehanna and to a smaller degree into Broad Creek; only in 1997 did they return. By warming the creek's water considerably, the BCMSR dam in 1948 put an end to lower Broad Creek's status as a prolific trout stream.

By the 1940s the entire BCMSR east of the Deep Run and Quarry Creek valleys and south of Finney was wooded wilderness with the exception of the area of The Pines near Castleton Rd. The only structures other than probably a couple at the Green Stone Quarry were a cluster of 5 on Castleton road near the southernmost point of BCMSR where a clearing and ruins remain today.

The BCMSR boundary from near the North Fork of Peddler Run (the only part of BCMSR not in the Broad Creek watershed) across Castleton Rd. almost to Robinson Mill Rd. is still marked with some of the 8 beautiful old white "flint" boundary stones on this part of the old H. Clay Whiteford estate of the 1800s.

A bench mark at BCMSR's highest point, 494 feet above sea level, was labeled "Scout" and added in 1947 at The Pines.

The 1945-48 U.S. Geological Survey map showed the 210 acres leased from Philadelphia Electric beginning in 1946 (southern OA Hill, northeast Oest, and all but the southern Hemlocks) to be an undifferentiated part of BCMSR. This map also shows the first use of the term "Broad Creek Memorial Camp" on a government map.

The rest of BCMSR was more heavily settled by the 1940s due to more forgiving soils and topography. In Finney, the big Whiteford Farmhouse, still standing in 1998, and bigger barn (the stone foundations remain) plus other structures were still present; fields extended all the way to the OA Rd. near Deep Run but most of the Hamilton's eastern Finney tract and the Walnut Creek valleys were wooded.

The Susquehanna Hall School operated just north of BCMSR on Susquehanna Hall Rd. The 3 Boyle structures were on the west side of the very southern end of the OA Rd. east of Deep Run.

The Farnsworth farm was a cluster of 9 structures at and just downhill from Dan Beard. The Bagley cluster of four structures, remains still visible, was on the hillside just east of the OA Rd. crossing of Walnut Creek. Steps up to a structure built into the hillside just north of Susquehanna Hall Rd. at the OA Rd. junction are still present; three other structures on this Hamilton land were just to the northwest.

In Saffran in the 1940s the Terrell farm included a road from the current camp entrance along the BCMSR border to the north side of Prospect field where their large barn just west of the current Shop was located. The road curved across Riggs Ridge Rd. toward but never reaching the Nature Pond area.

Near the present old stone well-like structure were 8 small buildings. The Reynolds blacksmith shop near the east edge of the camp entrance field also had a couple outbuildings, as did a larger building right across the road, of which a ruin remains.

In 1944 a fund-raising effort headed by Dr. J. M. T. Finney began; over $300,000 would be raised. After aerial surveys and an intensive search, the Saffran committee became increasingly interested in the Broad Creek site as the future Boy Scout home.

Over 100 residents including heads of many organized groups in Harford county such as the Grange, P.T.A.'s, churches, farmer groups, ice clubs, etc. met at the Kenmore Inn, listened to an inspirational speech by Finney, and agreed unanimously to support Broad Creek as the choice. Howard O'Neill, a highly respected Bel Air leader and lawyer, donated his services (as did so many construction volunteers) to approach the local land owners about selling, and had tremendous success quite quickly. According to the Harford County Directory in 1953, when local land "owners became aware of the civic necessity of the project they began cooperating to the fullest extent."

Perhaps the birthday of BCMSR should be April 7, 1946, when the deed from W. David Terrell to BAC created the very first part of Broad Creek Memorial Scout Reservation. The deed is recorded in Liber 295 at folio 276 of the Harford Co. land records and the 45 acres covered the future Frontier, Lookout, Susquehanna, pool, Nature Pond, Prospect, shop, and campfire circle areas of Saffran. For many years BAC volunteers and professionals alike had been planning, fund-raising, and planning some more. On April 7, 1946, they could finally go out and start writing the history of how to put together, run, and preserve a scout camp.