Dissertations and Theses @ UNI
Availability
Open Access Thesis
Keywords
Boy Scouts--History; Wilderness areas--Minnesota--History;
Abstract
In 1959, leaders of the Minnesota Valley Council, BSA (headquartered in Mankato, MN) began making plans to create a new Boy Scout camp to replace their recently built camp in Southern Minnesota. The previous fifteen years of the post-World War II era had produced significant shifts in ideas about wilderness, what constituted quality outdoor recreation, growing anxiety about masculinity in the Cold War era, and expansion of the promotion and adoption of a North Woods tourist culture. These changes helped lead the council to begin looking for a site to create a new Boy Scout camp and build Camp Cuyuna in Crosslake, MN. The Minnesota Valley Council, and its successor, the Twin Valley Council, built this camp in northern Minnesota with a Boy Scout version of wilderness in mind and put cultural values and beliefs into the landscape of the camp. These wilderness ideas helped to create a space that was somewhat separated from the modern world and infused with a North Woods wilderness aesthetic. This space was designed to be attractive to scouts while providing the challenges and opportunities to help scouts develop the skills and character traits to meet the challenges of the era.
Year of Submission
2022
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Department of History
First Advisor
Barbara Cutter, Chair, Thesis Committee
Date Original
12-2022
Object Description
1 PDF file (vii 120 pages)
Copyright
©2022 John Mark Fretham
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Fretham, John Mark, ""Land of the Silver Birch": Environmental attitudes and place-making in a Northern Minnesota Boy Scout camp, 1960-1975" (2022). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 1263.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/1263
