Scouts learn area's history while celebrating their own

The Boy Scouts of America is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

In an event Saturday marking that century of scouting, local Scouts explored the even longer history of the Pikes Peak region.

The Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum held Scouts Day, inviting Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts to visit the museum. Stations throughout the museum covered topics such as Native American history and culture, map reading and the history of the museum itself, located in the restored 1903 El Paso County courthouse.

In addition to opening windows into the past, the stations offered help toward achieving merit badges such as Indian lore and American culture.

One exhibit of particular interest to the more than 250 Scouts who attended the event: a Boy Scout uniform from 1940, complete with a flashlight and a first-aid kit.

The event was the idea of Rhonda Wootton, public programs assistant for the museum. It was a chance to honor 100 years of scouting while, at the same time, “we were excited to get some folks in the museum who maybe haven’t come here before,” she said.

Ben Cummings, 13, with Troop 509, had been to the museum once before, but not for a history lesson.

“I went to the bathroom here because we got stranded,” he said. On Saturday, he got a chance to explore the museum’s treasures.

“The mountain men were really interesting, and the one with the buffalo skin,” he said of the stations he had found the most interesting so far.

John Berdon, assistant scoutmaster for Troop 21, was there with a group of boys learning about Native American history and making parfleches — basically “an Indian suitcase,” as one scout described it.

Troop 21 was the same one Berdon was in when he was a Boy Scout.

“It’s more like what hasn’t it done?” Berdon said when asked what scouting had meant for him. “It has given me the skills that I probably wouldn’t have learned, those life skills that helped me become a better citizen, a better role model.”

The Scouts’ visit stirred memories for Jim Keene, a museum volunteer who was there to teach the boys about American Indians.

“I became a Cub Scout in 1936 and a Boy Scout in 1939,” he recalled.

He asked the boys gathered at his station to remind him of the scouting principles. They dutifully rattled them off, words such as loyal and courteous and kind.

“The rules, the ethics, they guide you through life,” Keene said.
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