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The first
known Scout troop in the Concho Valley Council territory was organized
in 1911 in San Angelo and eventually had 106 boys. It was chartered
with the American Boy Scouts out of New York City. The following
summer they had a week of camp in Col. J. R. Nasworthy's pasture on the
Concho River. Another troop was organized in Sonora in 1914, in Brady
and San Angelo in 1916 and one in Del Rio in 1921.
Six Scout troops
existed in San Angelo by May 14, 1922 and the San Angelo Kiwanis Club agreed
to sponsor the Boy Scouts of America by organizing a council. By
the end of the month the Kiwanis Club made application for a charter for
the "Tom Green County Scout Council." This was a "second-class
council" as it did not have a paid executive.
The new council
had summer camp at Leedale that August for two weeks with an attendance
of sixty-four boys. That fall a Boy Scout Band was organized with
twenty-two members and later grew to fifty members by the following spring.
Camp was held again the following summer, this time in September, in Christoval
with eighty-one Scouts. A Scout hut was build in the Civic League
Park in the Fall of 1923.
In January
of 1926 a concerted effort was made by the San Angelo Kiwanis Club to organize
a first class council, complete with a paid executive, to serve the surrounding
area. Houston Harte, publisher of the San Angelo Standard-Times and
President of the Kiwanis Club, appointed a committee of citizens to co-operate
with the local Scout council headed by Clarence Starke and Scoutmaster
Edward F. Johnson. Enough money had been raised by February within
the Kiwanis Club itself to hire Brice W. Draper as Scout Executive of the
Concho
Valley Council..
During the
same year, John C. Campbell, organization executive with the Boy Scouts,
organized the Southwest Texas Council. The organizational
meeting was held in the Strand Theater, Uvalde at 2 o'clock on June 22,
1926. Rev. M. M Fulmer became the first Scout Executive of
the council. Less than a year later, H. B. Palmer became Scout Executive
after Fulmer had to resign because of a heart leakage.
The council
experienced financial troubles during the depression and the Southwest
Texas Council failed to recharter in 1933. The troops were chartered
with the Region Nine office in 1934 and 1935. In 1936 they were merged
with the Concho Valley Council.
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