Boy Scouts of America sell Frank Childress Scout Reservation

The Ozark Trails Council Inc. of Boy Scouts of America has sold the Frank Childress Scout Reservation near Joplin to a not-for-profit agency, the Frank Childress Reserve Property Committee. The sale was completed Oct. 4.

According to a news release from the Ozark Trails Council, the local chapter of Boy Scouts of America, the sale of the 175-acre wooded property was at a cost of $500,000, roughly 28% of the property’s assessed value of $1.8 million. To help the committee with the purchase, council officials say they assisted in the committee’s fundraising efforts.

Ozark Trails Council Scout Executive and CEO John Feick said the decision came down to maintaining a focus on mission.

“Our mission is to serve kids and have them be scouts,” he said. “That group’s focus is going to be on managing the camp for multiple camp users.”

Eric DeGruson, chair of the Frank Childress Reserve Property Committee, described everyone on the committee as “scouters” who were involved in the Frank Childress Reservation prior to the sale.

“Our primary goal was to keep the property available to scouts,” he said. “One of the terms that we were happy to agree with was that if we did not make the property available to scouts, ownership would revert back.”

Scouts will pay a fee to camp at the Childress Reserve, just as they do at Camp Arrowhead, the century-old council-owned property in Marshfield. The Ozark Trails Council website shows that in 2023, the seven-day summer resident camp at Camp Arrowhead cost $295 for Scouts and $140 for leaders.

The Property Committee also aims to serve other organizations, such as sports teams and church groups, at the Childress Reserve, DeGruson said.

Before the sale, Ozark Trails Council had been managing four camp properties, Feick said. In addition to Camp Arrowhead and the Childress Reserve, there is the Cow Creek Scout Reservation, on Table Rock Lake near Blue Eye, which the council leases from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Camp Plagens Conservation Area, located just south of Pittsburg, Kansas.

Feick said the Ozark Trails Council came about from a merger of two councils in 1994: the Ozark Council, based in Springfield, and the Mo-Kan Council, based in Joplin. Camp Arrowhead was central to the Springfield-based council, and the Childress Reservation was central to the Joplin one. Since the merger, Camp Arrowhead has served as the main camp location.

“We’ve got more camping capacity than we can really make use of,” Feick said.

He added that Ozark Trails had been subsidizing the Childress Reservation.

“There were expenses above and beyond the income that we were getting – that was a big part of it,” he said.

He said the sale eliminates that subsidy expense for an estimated savings of $25,000 per year.

The Frank Childress Reserve Property Committee registered with the secretary of state’s office in February. Before that, the members had operated as the Boy Scouts Property Committee, running the camp for the organization, DeGruson said.

DeGruson added the Ozark Trails Council had a paid caretaker for the site, and his committee is looking to hire that person back.