Camp Tye Brook (1925-1940)
Year(s) Operated: 1925-1940
Location: Piney River, VA
Camp Tye Brook was located in Nelson County on the Tye River just north of present day Route 56 on property owned by the Saunders family (the camp was named for their nearby family home, Tye Brook). The permanence desired by the local council was certainly achieved at Tye Brook. When fully built-out, the camp boasted a number of frame “shacks” for housing campers, a headquarters and trading post building, a large dining hall, and other ancillary buildings.
The camp began operating on 3 July 1925 with Scout Executive C. B. Woodhead as director. A contingent of nineteen boys from Lynchburg spent the first week at camp after its preparation by an advance party. In 1928, the camp was directed by W. H. Lloyd, with Edward and Frank Newman, Ed Jones, P. G. Cosby, and Neg Legrand as counselors. In 1932, then Scout Executive R. W. Parker was camp director and Dan S. Wickline was waterfront director. John Gannaway, an instructor at Virginia Episcopal School, served as camp director in the mid-1930s.
In May 1930, the Lynchburg Council, BSA (soon to be rechartered as the Piedmont Area Council) entered into a contract with members of the Saunders family to purchase the 108.3 acres surrounding the camp for $5,000.00. While the transfer was not to officially occur until July of the next year, the Boy Scouts were authorized to begin construction of a concrete dam on the Tye River as soon as they wished. With a dam at the downstream end of its 1,900 feet of river frontage, the camp would be able to offer additional swimming and boating opportunities for the boys. Aquatics activities were a centerpiece of life at Tye Brook, and Scouts earned various recognitions for their achievements including felt “water dogs” that could be affixed to their swimsuits. A green water dog was awarded for swimming 100 yards, and a blue water dog was earned for passing the “merit test.”
Tye Brook was used by more than just Lynchburg-area Boy Scouts. Scouts from the Hampton Roads area attended the camp frequently (including sixty-five from Newport News is 1931). Two years earlier, fifty Girl Scouts participated in programs at Tye Brook prior to the regular Boy Scout summer season, which consisted of three sessions of two weeks each. In the early 1940s, the camp was used by area 4-H youth.
In 1939, Scout Executive Homer Fulton Cotey, who had recently transferred from Vicksburg, Mississippi to Lynchburg, encouraged the creation of a local lodge of the Order of the Arrow, the Boy Scouts’ honor society that had been created on Treasure Island in the Delaware River in 1915. On July 7, 1939, Ne-Pah-Win Lodge No. 161 of the Order of the Arrow was chartered at Camp Tye Brook. (The lodge’s name was translated as “sleeping Indian,” and fell out of favor with members of the lodge, who changed its moniker to Koo Koo Ku Hoo “wise bird of the forest” in 1952.) Charter members of the lodge included Abe Craddock, Maynard Duvall, Carey Jones, Jimmy Jones, Lloyd Jordan, Billy McIntosh, Beverly McVeigh, Bob Ramsey, Fred Showalter, Jr. (all of Lynchburg), James Walker of Danville, and Jack Walker of Bedford. One of the primary missions of the Order of the Arrow is to provide service to the local council’s camp, and the new lodge executed several service projects including adding handrails to the camp’s foot bridges and conducting reforestation activities.
African American Scouts from throughout Piedmont Area Council had the opportunity to experience long-term summer camping, but never at the same time (and not always in the same place) as white Scouts. In 1939, the council operated Camp Bolton Smith near Camp Tye Brook during a special week for approximately thirty-five black Scouts, with aide from Tye Brook’s aquatics staff. Memphis investment banker Bolton Smith, the camp’s namesake, was a vice president of the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America and was an early proponent of extending Scouting opportunities to African Americans.
Piedmont Area Council abandoned the camp in 1940 due to high turbidity (cloudiness of the water) caused by upstream mining and milling operations of the American Rutile Corporation. While Camp Tye Brook acquired its drinking water from a pure spring on site, the council’s camping committee felt that the water quality issues in the river posed a safety issue for swimmers. In 1943, the council sold the camp tract back to the Saunders family. Over time, most of the camp buildings were dismantled for use by the family’s agricultural operations. Remaining today are the wing walls of the dam on the Tye River and a cottage built by Council Camp Committee Chairman Dr. Robert W. Williams.