‘It’s a sad loss. An end of an era.’ Memories of Morrison and Tapawingo camps | Opinion

I’ve spent many nights at Camp Morrison, the Boy Scouts camp in McCall that has been sold to the Albertson family development company.

My first time was for a “Webelos Woods” campout when my older son was just a 10-year-old Cub Scout before he crossed over to being a Boy Scout.

Since then, I’ve done many summer and winter camps with the Scouts.

One of my most joyful memories was sending both of my sons to Camp Morrison together as Boy Scouts.

It was a sad day, then, when the Mountain West Council announced that it had sold the 150-acre camp, ending an era of scout camps at the site.

I’ve led Troop 100 on summer trips to other camps on the Oregon Coast, in North Idaho on Lake Coeur d’Alene and to Montana.

Camp Morrison isn’t the nicest or the most beautiful. But it’s close to Boise and a less-expensive option for dozens of troops around the Treasure Valley.

Selling the camp today makes sense. With declining enrollment in Scouts, attendance at the camp has been down. The Mountain West Council, which runs Morrison, also owns Camp Bradley north of Stanley. Having two camps so close to each other in one district doesn’t make sense. It makes more sense to focus on one camp.

Still, it’s sad to see Morrison go.

But there’s a lot more backstory to Camp Morrison than most people are probably aware of.

Camp Tapawingo was sold first

I thought it was ironic that one of the biggest concerns that led to the sale of the camp was the presence of neighbors in houses across the street.

Ironic, because a couple of those houses wouldn’t be there if the local scout council, then named Ore-Ida, hadn’t sold Camp Tapawingo to California developer Doug Manchester back in 1986.

If you come across some old scouters today and mention the word Tapawingo, you’ll see them visibly cringe.

The sale of Camp Tapawingo, considered the “crown jewel” of the Ore-Ida Council, was contentious and widely panned.

Letter after letter to the editor in the Idaho Statesman leading up to the sale urged council executives not to sell the 45-acre camp that was right on the waterfront.

Elinor Chehey put it aptly at the time: “It’s like selling our birthright for a bowl of porridge.”

The Statesman editorial board wrote at least two editorials condemning the sale.

“You don’t sell your grandmother’s wedding ring just because the family suffers financial reverses,” the editorial board wrote in December 1985. “You find other ways to get by.”

I don’t think the sale price was ever disclosed, but the council was expecting to get $2 million for the land. Today, the land where Tapawingo was located is assessed at about $15 million. With the homes on the property, the land is assessed at nearly $34 million today.

The land has since been split into two parcels and there are houses on both parcels. They’re owned by Joe Scott, the grandson of Joe Albertson, the founder of the Albertsons grocery store chain. Ostensibly, they’re among the neighbors who have had to suffer through early-morning flag ceremonies and the sound of gunshots at the rifle range.

Not for long, though, now that they’ve purchased Camp Morrison.

Interestingly, as I pored over Idaho Statesman archives, I saw that one of the most prominent voices to oppose the sale of Tapawingo in 1986 was none other than Joe Albertson.

Velma Morrison’s opposition

Another vocal opponent of the Tapawingo sale was Velma Morrison, after whose family Camp Morrison is named. In 1965, the Harry W. Morrison Foundation helped the Ore-Ida Council purchase 150 acres adjacent to Tapawingo, land that became Camp Morrison.

“We are appalled at the proposed decision of the Ore-Ida Council to dispose of Camp Tapawingo’s beautiful site at Payette Lakes,” Velma Morrison wrote in a letter to the editor of the Idaho Statesman in 1986. “Never in our wildest dreams did we expect that executive board members would entertain such an asinine thought as to dispose of this camp.”

Morrison also wrote something prescient at the time.

“As an afterthought,” wrote Morrison, then president of the Morrison Foundation, “I wish that our foundation would have put a sale restriction on the Camp Morrison property so they could not entertain any future thoughts of selling Camp Morrison such as they are contemplating the sale of Camp Tapawingo.”

Fond memories of Tapawingo

My good friend Josh Lunn was a camper at Tapawingo and counselor at Morrison the year after Tapawingo was sold.

He fondly and vividly remembers being inducted into the Order of the Arrow in a ceremony on the Tapawingo waterfront in which a flaming arrow was shot from the beach into the lake.

He later became scoutmaster of his boyhood troop, Troop 100, and was scoutmaster for my and his sons, who all attended Camp Morrison.

He’s one of those scouters who cringes at the mention of “Tapawingo,” so painful and anger-inducing that sale was.

But he said he doesn’t feel the same level of anger at the sale of Morrison.

“Well, I wasn’t surprised,” Josh said, noting the declining number of scouts and attendance at camp. “I saw it coming, because they have Camp Bradley, so I figured that was the resource they’d use instead of Morrison.”

After Tapawingo was sold, the council retained a 275-foot sliver of beachfront to the north, which meant that scouts attending Camp Morrison would have to walk a mile or so on a trail through the woods, cut across the road and then another few hundred feet down to the cramped waterfront for activities.

Josh says he wishes the council hadn’t sold Tapawingo at all, but at least he wishes the council had retained a sliver of beachfront to the south, closer to Camp Morrison, and sold the northern part of Tapawingo instead.

“That would have kept Morrison more viable,” he said. “I think that was the biggest issue, once they got rid of that nice waterfront, and they had easy access to it. I was like, ‘Oh, they’re so dumb.’ They should have shifted it over 300 feet, kept that waterfront. But they didn’t, and that was the downfall of Morrison ever since.”

Perhaps, if the council hadn’t sold Tapawingo back in 1986, it wouldn’t be contemplating the sale of Morrison today. With that waterfront, the combined camps Tapawingo and Morrison likely would be attracting scout troops from all over and continue to be the “crown jewel” of the council.

“Tapawingo was so much better than Morrison, and Morrison was such a letdown once they sold it, especially with the waterfront, that Morrison just lost its appeal for me after Tapawingo had been sold,” Josh said.

Still, it’s going to be sad to see Morrison go. Josh remembers building latrines at Morrison that still stand today. His dad was scoutmaster of Troop 100 when Josh was a kid going to Morrison and he became Troop 100 scoutmaster with his kids going to Morrison.

That history will end in a couple of years, when Morrison closes and the land is turned over to the Scotts.

“It’s a real bummer that I won’t be able to show my grandkids, ‘Hey, I walked this trail, or I helped build this latrine,’ ” he said. “It’s going to be private property and you won’t be able to walk around and reminisce. It’s a sad loss. An end of an era. And so it’s a bygone memory that will just fade with time.”