Beloved Boy Scout summer camp in northern Arizona to remain open

Camp Geronimo, where thousands of Scouts have come each summer for decades to learn archery, canoeing and other outdoor activities in the Mogollon Rim wilderness near Payson, will not be sold after all.

Arizona’s Grand Canyon Council of the Boy Scouts of America dropped plans to sell the property after parents and former Scouts ignited an outcry.

The organization will find other ways to help pay its required contribution to the Boy Scouts of America’s sexual abuse settlement trust, its chief executive says.

Geronimo’s summer camp program serves about 3,000 Scouts each year from across the Southwest. The 100-year-old camp is located on 200 acres but is surrounded by 5,000 acres of Ponderosa pines in the shadow of the rugged Mogollon Rim cliffs.

Scouts spend a week at a time at the camp earning merit badges in cooking, soil and water conservation, rifle shooting, wilderness survival, hiking, horsemanship and dozens of other scout activities.

Andy Price, the CEO of Grand Canyon Council, said after the council last year announced its plans to sell, parents and former Scouts came to him asking what they could do to protect Geronimo.

“It really was largely an emotional impact on people for whom Geronimo means so much,” Price said.

Chapter 11 filed in response to lawsuits

The Grand Canyon Council has created the Geronimo Endowment Fund to offset the maintenance costs of the camp. Price said it costs about $250,000 a year to keep the camp maintained.

In 2020, the Boy Scouts of America filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors in response to thousands of sexual abuse lawsuits. More than 82,000 individuals have said they were sexually abused while in Scouts, making it the largest-ever child sex abuse case involving a single national organization.

In July 2021, BSA proposed an $850 million settlement. The agreement required Arizona’s Grand Canyon Council to contribute $7 million to the settlement trust.

To pay its required contribution, the council first decided to sell Camp Geronimo, its primary summer camp.

“At that time, the best way that we could meet an obligation to fund our council's contribution to the Boy Scouts of America Settlement Fund was to contribute Geronimo and some additional cash,” Price said.

“Since that time, we've had the benefit that the Chapter 11 case has taken longer than expected,” Price said. “That's given us more time to continue studying our camps and our facilities.

“We were unhappy with the previous decision, but it was sort of the best of a lot of bad options,” Price said. “And now that we know more about the situation and some of the dynamics have changed slightly, we now have a new path that allows us to keep Camp Geronimo.”

On July 20, the council announced it would keep Camp Geronimo open.

On July 29, a federal bankruptcy judge approved parts of the Boy Scouts of America’s bankruptcy exit plan, which includes a $2.7 billion settlement trust to compensate survivors.

The Grand Canyon Council is still required to contribute $7 million toward this settlement. Price said that the council will use some cash it has from the sale of Little Grand Canyon Ranch near New River about two years ago.

The council is still planning to sell about 13 acres of the Heard Scout Pueblo's 500 acres in south Phoenix. And it is in the early stages of finding ways to monetize Camp Raymond, its 160-acre camp 30 miles outside of Flagstaff between the Kaibab and Coconino national forests, Price said.

Camp Geronimo never shut down its operations. Even before retreating from the decision to sell the camp, the council was planning to run its summer camp program through summer 2023.

If the council had continued with plans to sell Geronimo, it would have moved Geronimo’s summer camp operations to Camp Raymond.

Raymond would have been able to offer essentially the same programs and accommodated all the Scouts who would have attended Geronimo, Price said.

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'It's always been a tremendous experience'

Fifth-generation Arizonan and Scottsdale resident Blair Coe Schweiger has taken her 17-year-old son to Camp Geronimo’s weeklong summer camps almost every year since he was 11.

The first time she visited Geronimo, she was 16, and it was one of the best days of her life, she said. She was visiting her friends who were Boy Scouts, and she knew she wanted to provide that experience for her future children.

“It’s always been a tremendous experience for them, being outside, getting to see the beautiful area that Camp Geronimo is in,” Coe Schweiger said.

Activities at the camp include merit badge clinics where Scouts learn a variety of skills and service projects focused on nature preservation, like fixing hiking trails.

As an adult leader at the camp — her role in her son’s troop is advancement coordinator and social media chair — she has been able to benefit from Geronimo’s environment as well.

During the one year she wasn’t able to attend with her son, she was receiving treatment for cancer. The next year, when she returned to Geronimo, “it was very therapeutic,” she said. “It helped me get my strength back.”

“It was disappointing, initially, when they had chosen Geronimo to be sold because we love it,” Coe Schweiger said. “When we heard that it wasn’t going to be sold, we were obviously very happy that another plan had been come up with to meet the social obligations we have, as well as the obligation to our Scouts.”

Includes information from Arizona Republic reporter Daniel Gonzalez. Madeleine Parrish covers equity issues for The Arizona Republic. Reach her at madeleine.parrish@gannett.com and follow her on Twitter @maddieparrish61. 

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Boy Scout's Camp Geronimo in Arizona to remain open