When Camp Bashore opened in 1947, it looked more like a farm than a Boy Scout camp.

There wasn’t a lake, hardly any trees and surely no swimming pool. It was just a plot of land in Jonestown, and campers slept out in WWII surplus tents with a pop-up kitchen in its center.

Using the help of the Army Corps of Engineers and man-hours from Fort Indiantown Gap, a small creek was transformed into the camp's lake, where boating and fishing takes place daily.  

With the addition of shower houses, a pool, a gun range and other amenities over the decades, Camp Bashore has become loved by Boy Scout troops all over the mid-Atlantic region and a community staple for Lebanon County.

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“The camp has been pretty great,” said Nathan Mcelhaney, 16, who was spending his third year there this summer. “I went to a different camp before, but they seemed to be cutting costs in food and staff didn’t seem to really care.

“This camp is more upbeat and a much more happy environment.”

Each year, the camp opens on Father’s Day weekend and rotates troops for the next seven weeks. Campers come on Sunday, stay for the week, then leave on Saturday.

On any given week during that time, the land is home to 200-250 campers, who spend their time working on their different badges.

Bill Weike, 94, who lives in Lebanon, has been apart of the Boy Scouts for most of his life. He remembers the first year that Camp Bashore was opened, when he took his first troop.

“I think scouting is one of the reasons I went through the Navy,” he said. “They taught me to swim, they taught me to listen.”

Enlisting at the age of 16, he served in World War II.

Weike reminisced about how the camp and scouting has advanced over the years, particularly in the area of safety. When he was in the Scouts, the sleeping bag as we know it wasn’t widely used, and neither were backpacks.

Instead, when they went on hikes, they brought everything they had wrapped up on the end of a pole.

The camp is now celebrating its 75th year in the service of the Boy Scouts with an open house weekend from the Aug. 12-14.

The three-day event will include a visit from state Republican Rep. Russ Diamond and Republican U.S. Congressman Dan Meuser, joining current and former camp members and staff at a bonfire program on the end of the lake. Photos of this year’s campers will be memorialized in a time capsule, not to be opened until the centennial anniversary.

Camping for scouting troops and youth groups will be free. The public is also allowed to camp on the grounds for $10 per family/individual or $25 for campers and RV’s.

Participants will be able to enjoy the same activities that are provided to the Boy Scouts, for free, along with some special entertainment and food services.

In those 75 years since it opened, the camp has changed and been updated not only out of necessity but with goals of retention.

In 1979, the state Department of Health nearly shut the camp down, demanding they build a shower hall and swimming pool, said David Matterness, who has worked for the camp for years.

The showers were built shortly after the mandate, and the camp was allowed to remain open, while the pool construction didn't begin until the 1990s.

The physical size of the camp itself has also expanded over the years. When the camp was first built, it sat on 150 acres of farmland but now spans across 400.

Weike recalled that once generous people from Lebanon County had helped to remodel the dining hall, allowing it to feed 300 campers at a time, expansion and remodeling really began to take off.

“Another beautiful thing that has been done is the construction of the rifle range,” he said.

Weike said that when he was in the Scouts, they didn’t even have badges for archery and shooting.

Now, they plan to remodel the showers this summer to better accommodate the recent rule changes allowing girls to join the Scouts.

Recently, a part of the camp's original building has been outfitted with a STEM lab where campers more interested in science and technology can earn badges in those fields.

“Scouting is still the go-to for camping and outdoor activity, you know, we can go out and light fires and sleep in a tent and do all those things that are traditional scouting,” said camp director Terry Wade.

“But then as times have changed, we have also needed to modernize, reach a new audience of Scouts that maybe aren’t so much into the camping aspects, but they see the fun things we’re doing with technology and the new sciences and so forth.”

The camp has always relied on support from the community. Many of its construction projects have been done from people wishing to give back, and much of its funding comes from individual donations and groups like the Friends of Camp Bashore.

But the campers are expected to give back as well, as counselors actively look for community projects around the area like refurbishing parks and benches and conducting blood drives.

Every year the camp provides thousands of hours of community service around the area.

You can learn more about Camp Bashore at padutchbsa.org