Century Of Scouting
Park Hill-based Troop 62 Is Turning 100. They Are Throwing A Big Party, And Everyone Is Invited
Story and photos by Cara DeGette
Editor, GPHN
“[The] Colorado Boy Scout is a living university and encyclopedia and for the actual business of life he has the one priceless equipment—the ability to meet physical emergency. Here is a boy who can build fires, cook, find shelter, and face and fight storms. Where most people get lost he finds the way and where others quit he goes into action.”
This description of a Western scout appeared in the January-February, 1931 issue of Municipal Facts, a popular newsletter that was produced by the City of Denver in the early to mid-1900s. At the time of the publication, Troop 62 — the second-oldest troop in Colorado — was 10 years old.
This year, on Oct. 3, Troop 62 is celebrating its 100th birthday with a big public bash on the grounds of the Park Hill Masonic Lodge on Montview Boulevard and Dexter Street, where the troop currently meets. The festivities will last from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Troop 62 is now chartered with girls’ Troop 262, and Crew 62, which is a high-adventure unit for both boys and girls ages 14-20. For many of them, the birthday party is more than hitting the century mark. It’s a welcome reentry into being able to return to normal — and also a symbolic bookend to when Troop 62 first formed.
In 1921, the world was emerging from the siege of the Spanish Flu epidemic. A hundred years later, Troop 62 is emerging from COVID-19. And, as many will affirm, trying to scout for the past year-and-a-half has been challenging, and a little weird.
“The whole idea of scouting is meeting in person, and doing activities,” says Connor Beardsley, a Star Scout with Troop 62. During the pandemic summer of 2020, the troop got creative, including having online campouts where scouts would set up tents in their own backyards and connect via Zoom. But it wasn’t anywhere close to the same as the real thing.
“It was definitely a relief this summer, when we were able to go to the Philmont Scout Camp in New Mexico to put our skills to work,” Beardsley says.
Sarah Felsen, an assistant scoutmaster for Troop 62, says the number of active members dwindled during the pandemic, from about 50 to 30. They are working, she says, to bolster their numbers. She described the joy of watching the scouts in action, including one camping trip in July where an outdoor adventurer showed up at the campsite with a tarp, a sleeping bag and a rope. And that’s it, with the exception of a great attitude. “He couldn’t have been happier,” Felsen says. “It was so inspiring how little he needed to be happy.”
Organizers have been working for months to track down as many past members of Troop 62, including the 155 boys who have achieved the highest status a scout can achieve — Eagle Scout — since the troop formed 100 years ago. All scouts — past and current — are invited on Oct. 3, as is the general public. Organizers are assembling a board displaying the names of all of the Eagles.
The scouts are building a 20 foot-long pioneering structure, and there will be an obstacle course, a dunk tank, magnetic fishing, an air cannon, pillow fights and a rain gutter regatta. Two games — Basket Ball and Ring Catching — date to the 1920s and were created by Robert Baden-Powell, the British founder of the international scouting movement. Food and snacks will include funnel cakes, burgers and Biker Jim hot dogs with exotic meat like ostrich and rattlesnake (there will be vegetarian options as well). And, of course, there will be a s’mores station.
Attendance is free, but there will be a charge for many of the games and refreshments. Scoutmaster Achim Klug says proceeds will be used to offset costs, and for Troop 62, which continues the tradition — albeit one that now welcomes all genders — described back in 1931 by Denver’s Municipal Facts:
“There is no living being so fortunate as [the Colorado Boy Scout],” He can climb like a mountain sheep; he can scamper over the landscape like a rabbit; he can blaze trails and strike camps … he can whistle and call like any one of two or three hundred birds. What he knows about trees and flowers and shrubs and mountains is worth more than what most of the rest of us know in all our lives.”