Boy Scouts on Clean-Up Day, 1915

Promoting citizenship and patriotism, scouts performed wartime service, assisted in peacetime relief work, and greeted such dignitaries as Charles Lindbergh. Chicago Boy and Girl Scouts learned wilderness skills and gained appreciation for the environment at camps near the city and in nearby states. The Owasippe Scout Reservation in Michigan, owned by the Chicago Boy Scout Council since 1911, is the nation's oldest scout camp. Originally militaristic in tone, camps gradually became primarily recreational and educational. As suburban populations grew, especially in the 1960s, scouting programs expanded, sponsored as they were in the city, by communities, churches, and other organizations.

Both male and female Chicago scouts have engaged in career-oriented programs. The Argonne National Laboratory provided scouts access to science and engineering research. The Chicago Police Department, through the Explorers Program, offered teenaged scouts experience in law enforcement professions. Sea Scouts practiced naval management on ships affiliated with Chicago and suburban troops.

Chicago was the setting for various scouting milestones. Chicago hosted two national Boy Scout Council meetings, in 1951 and 1958. In 1985, a twenty-two-cent stamp celebrating American Boy Scouting's 75th anniversary was dedicated at Chicago. In 2002, Girl Scouts celebrated their 90th anniversary at Navy Pier.

Chicago scouts came to represent the region's diversity. Chicago's ethnic residents joined scout troops or formed their own groups, such as the Polish Scouting Organization. Troops began the gradual process of racial integration in the 1920s. In the 1990s, the Chicago Commission on Human Relations criticized the Chicago Area Boy Scouts Council's discrimination against a homosexual Eagle Scout. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, hundreds of thousands of boys and girls in the Chicago region participated in scouting through dozens of councils.

Elizabeth D. Schafer