- Established on twenty-five acres that eventually grew to one hundred acres of land on the East Fork of the Pigeon River
- Ruben B. Robertson purchased the land and donated it to Champion Paper and Fibre Mill with the express purpose of creating a camp for boys and girls.
- The camp was named for Hope Robertson, Ruben B. Robertson’s wife.
- A club formed to finance amenities at the camp: club house, cabins, athletic field, baseball diamond, basketball court, tennis court, shuffleboard surface, swimming pool, and an open-air pavilion. Campers also hiked, swam in the nearby Pigeon River, learned about nature, some were involved in scouting, built campfires, and participated in woodcraft.
- The Canton YMCA was overseer of the camp.
- Boys camped from July 19 – August 1; girls camped from August 2 – August 14.
- The fee was $5 per week.
- High Valley Camp developed out of the New College Community Experience of New College Branch of Columbia University’s Teacher’s College.
- The program at Springdale in Cruso was a significant social and educational experiment for training future teachers enrolled at Columbia University in New York City.
- Dr. Thomas Alexander, Columbia University professor, instituted a program in which Columbia teachers in training would be involved in five areas of preparation:
- (1) study academics and write a thesis
(2) spend at least one summer working on a farm in NC
(3) study abroad and learn a foreign language
(4) incorporate workplace training
(5) participate in a year’s internship that involved teaching under supervision - Teachers in training would not only receive excellent instruction tools at their college, work, and international experience, but their training included encountering the difficulties of real-life rural experiences on a working farm.
- A camp concept accompanied the New College program, with some faculty and students from the school also serving as staff in some capacity at the camp.
- High Valley Camp opened as a part of the New College program in the Springdale/Cruso area five years after the initiation of the college program.
- Months of operation: June – August
- Campers boarded in cabins with eight bunks per cabin.
- Primary activities included participating on a working farm by tending animals, keeping a garden, hiking, soccer, and baseball.
- The camp sometimes involved local children with sports activities on the weekends.
- A July 4th fireworks festival became a community event for campers and local people.
- Campers and local children participated in musical shows at Cruso School.
- The camp bonded mostly out-of-state students with the local population.
- The program was in operation for twenty-seven years, closing in 1961.
- Established by the Boy Scout Council of America, Daniel Boone Council, the camp utilized a 700-acre tract of land on Little East Fork in Bethel to create one of the most highly attended Scouts BSA camps in the Eastern United States.
- Camp Daniel Boone is situated on the Robert Lee Ellis Boy Scout Reservation.
- Robert Lee Ellis was a Coca-Cola Bottling Company president who donated the land for the camp.
- The camp includes the following facilities: Dining Lodge, Vance Lodge (training facility), Osborne Lodge (ranger’s house), Damtoft Lodge (health lodge), Reuben Robertson Lodge (camp program lodge), Boonesboro Village (living history museum), Chip’s Chapel, and Lake Allen.
- Summer camps operate for nine weeks each summer.
- Unit campouts may use the facility throughout the year.
- Camp Daniel Boone hosts 5,000 Scouts each summer for different councils around the U.S.
- High Adventure Camp includes whitewater rafting and kayaking, a fifty-four-mile backpacking adventure to Shining Rock, mile-high camping, and other activities.
- The most up-to-date estimate available is that over 50,000 Scouts and 19,000 adults have been a part of Scouting in NC since 1920, including 4,200 Eagle Scouts.
- Camp Daniel Boone continues today and includes Girl Scout troop programs