Philmont Scout Ranch

Philmont Scout Ranch is the oldest of the "high-adventure bases" operated by the Boy Scouts of America, along with the Florida High Adventure Sea Base[?] and a collection of programs in the Boundary Waters[?]. As such, it has been enthusiastically called the "Mecca" or the "Holy Grail" of Scouting.

Table of contents 1 Location and geography 2 History 3 Program and activities 3.1 Base Camp and related topics 3.2 Camps 3.2.1 Staffed camps and "program" 3.2.2 Commissaries 4 External links

Location and geography Philmont is located in the Sangre de Cristo Range of the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico. The closest town is Cimarron, New Mexico, but perhaps it is better to say that it is about 20 miles west-northwest of Springer, New Mexico, or 35 miles southwest of Raton, New Mexico. It is shaped somewhat like the letter 'I,' with the bottom section larger than the top. It is about 12 miles across (east to west) at its widest point, and about 30 miles long. There are no mountains to the south of Philmont, or to the east (indeed, part of the eastern fringe of the ranch is flatland) but the interior is quite mountainous.

The lowest elevation is 6500 feet, at the southeast corner. The highest point is the peak of Baldy Mountain (12,441 feet), on the northwest boundary. The most recognizable landmark at Philmont is the Tooth of Time (9003 feet), a granite monolith protruding 500 vertical feet from an east-west ridge. Tooth of Time Ridge, and the latitude line it sits on, mark the boundary between the central and southern sections of Philmont. The boundary between the central and northern sections is the narrowest part of the 'I'-shape, only a few miles across. U.S. Highway 64 runs through Philmont just south of this line.

History

In prehistory, American Indians of the Jicarilla Apache and Moache Ute tribes inhabited Philmont. At least one Indian archaeological site exists in the north section, and various camps seek to preserve Philmont's Indian heritage.

In the mid-19th century, the Santa Fe Trail[?] crossed the plains just southwest of Philmont. The Tooth of Time owes its name to this trail; travelers knew that once they passed it, they had only a few weeks to go until they reached Santa Fe, New Mexico. Philmont's strategic location along the trail spurred some interest in it. In 1841, Carlos Beaubien and Guadalupe Miranda obtained a large land grant from the Mexican government, including the present ranch. Soon the grant fell into the hands of Beaubien's son-in-law Lucien Maxwell, who played an important role in developing and settling it. Maxwell sold the ranch to the Maxwell Land Grant and Railroad Company, which gave up and handed it on to a Dutch development company, which decided to parcel it out to ranchers.
An old Mexican homestead was preserved on the ranch, as part of Abreu camp, for many years until it burned down, leaving only a stone fireplace[?] and chimney. A reconstructed homestead may be seen less than a mile away at New Abreu camp. Herds of cattle, another relic of this era, graze in the numerous meadows of southeastern Philmont.

The history of mining at Philmont dates back to the years immediately after the Civil War. The story is that an Indian befriended a Union soldier, and happened to give him a shiny rock. (This contributor finds the story suspect, because any Union troops stationed in New Mexico at the time would have been involved in driving out the Indians.) The shiny material in the rock was found to be copper. According to the story, the soldier and two of his friends went up to investigate, and found gold. However, they could not stay and mine the gold, and by the time they returned the next year, the area was overrun by miners. Scores of gold mines were excavated in Philmont, and operated into the early 20th century. A large vein of gold is said to lie under Baldy Mountain to this day, but extracting it has not been feasible.
The Contention Mine, located at Cyphers Mine camp, is open to guided tours.

The penultimate owner of Philmont was wealthy oil magnate and wilderness enthusiast Waite Phillips[?], founder of a chain of gas stations that exists to this day, who amassed a large part of the old land grant in the 1920s. Phillips built a large residence at Philmont, and called it the Villa Philmonte. He also constructed a number of hunting lodges and day-use camps. It would not have been beyond his means to bring electricity to those camps, but he decided not to. Some of these camps have been preserved, complete with wood-burning stoves, oil lamps, and other design features indicative of Phillips's often eccentric taste. (This particular contributor personally saw two of these preserved facilities, at the camps known as Fish Camp and Hunting Lodge.) Phillips used the ranch as a private game reserve, but would sometimes allow others to use it, including a few Boy Scout troops. He was so impressed with the Scouts that in 1938, he donated a significant part of it to the Boy Scouts of America. They initially named it the "Philturn Rockymountain Scoutcamp" [sic]. The word 'Philturn' comes from Waite Phillips's name, together with the "Good Turn" he did by donating the property. In 1941, Phillips added the rest of his ranch, including the Villa Philmonte. To help fund the upkeep of Philmont, he threw in a large office building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The ranch's name was changed at this time.

Philmont was run differently in the early years than it is now. Half a dozen "base camps" were constructed at strategic locations. A visting group of Scouts would stay at one of these camps for a week, and day-hike to surrounding locations of interest. (Conventional stationary camps are usually operated in this manner, as well.) If the Scouts wanted to visit a different area, they would pack up their gear, hoist it onto donkeys, and hike to another base camp. Eventually, possibly due to the advent of modern lightweight metal-frame backpacks and other backpacking technology, the program was restructured to be backpacking-based.

Program and activities

Most of those who come to Philmont come for the trek, an 11-day backpacking trip. (A group of Scouts on a trek is called a crew.) Other program options include:

• Cavalcades are similar to standard treks, but conducted on horseback.
• Rayado Treks are twice as long as standard treks, and considerably more strenuous. Rayado crews are put together by Philmont staff, and consist of people from different parts of the country.
• The Philmont Training Center offers weeklong training programs for adult leaders, and a variety of outdoor programs for trainees' families.

Base Camp and related topics

Base Camp is a town unto itself. It has a post office, half a dozen chapels (operating daily), two dining halls, a clinic, a store for souvenirs and sundry camping gear, housing (mainly tents) for roughly 900 staff, and tents for between 800 and 1000 trekkers. Trekkers are organized into crews of seven to twelve (usually closer to twelve than to seven), with two to four adult leaders. A contingent consists of one or more crews from the same council (see Boy Scouts of America: Organization), traveling together. Around 360 trekkers arrive at Base Camp every day of the season. When they arrive, they are assigned a ranger, a young man or woman highly skilled in backpacking. The ranger's task is to guide the crew through "processing," (basically, registration), to make sure that the trekkers actually know how to backpack, and to teach them Philmont-specific camping practices.

Crews are required to pick up a dining fly. This is a 12-foot-square tarp with two collapsible aluminium poles. Its purpose (quite contrary to the name) is to serve as a rain cover for the crew's backpacks. It is supposed to be set up as an A-frame, with two opposite sides staked down, the middle held up by the poles, and the ends open. Many crews experiment with the use of trees, hiking poles, and other devices to obtain a roomier configuration so that it can be used for crew activities such as card games. Crews may also pick up Philmont tents. These tents are also A-frame, five feet wide by seven feet long, with a rain fly. They are more difficult to set up than conventional dome tents, but very easy to break down. They have a bad reputation, which this contributor considers to be undeserved, since they are not significantly heavier than commonly used dome tents.
Crews also pick up several days' worth of Philmont food (see "Commissaries" below). Philmont also provides optional cooking supplies.

After processing, crews are loaded up onto busses and shipped off to any of several trailheads, called "turnarounds" because there is a loop in the road for the bus to turn around. The crew and its ranger are now alone.

Camps

Philmont now has one large base camp, 23 staffed camps, and over 50 unstaffed camps, generally set no more than a couple of miles apart. Each camp may have over 15 crew campsites, but they are often spread out over half a mile of trail or more, so that there is no sense of crowding. Facilities at every campsite are:

• A fire ring.
• A sump[?]. This is an L-shaped plastic pipe, with a two-foot vertical section and a four-foot horizontal section perforated like a sieve. Most of it is underground, and the top is capped with a piece of mesh. Sumps are used to dispose of dirty dishwater.
• Several campsites share a bear cable. This is a metal cable, at least ten feet above the ground, used to hang bear bags[?].
• Several campsites also share a latrine. Latrines come in two configurations. The enclosed configuration has two seats facing the same direction, and is thus affectionately called the "pilot-copilot" design. The other configuration is better in that it has two seats back to back, so that, in a pinch, they can be used simultaneously (thus, it is called the "pilot-bombardier" design). On the other hand, its disadvantage is that it has neither roof nor walls. Philmont latrines of both types are known to house spiders, whose bite induces a rash.
• There is usually a camp map or two, posted on a wooden billboard or on the side of a pilot-copilot latrine.

Staffed camps and "program"

Some camps have several live-in staff members, in charge of the camp's "program." "Program" may be quite poorly defined as special activities run by staff. Program at any one camp includes several activities with a common theme, such as fur trapping[?], Apache Indian life, Mexican homestead, rock climbing, mining, fishing, ranching, etc.

Commissaries

A few staffed camps have "commissaries." A commissary is a small warehouse, located on a dirt road and stocked with Philmont food. A small room in the warehouse holds a store, which sells a small variety of odds and ends that just might be useful. Commissaries also sell white gas fuel[?] for crews' stoves. A crew typically stops by a commissary every few days, so that it does not have to carry a huge amount of consumables.

External links

• http://www.philmont.com is the unofficial website, complete with a basic message board. It (particularly the history section) has been used as a source for this article.