Philmont Scout Ranch


                                       

It's been a long time since my trip to Philmont in New Mexico. The year was 1960. I can't find the photos from that trip, they may have been lost in a fire. But, as you see, I still have the group photo. Any details of the trip have also been lost, except that I have the Philmont Ranch map from my trip. I marked the path we took and the number of nights at a campsite on the map. Other than that, some of the highlights are still etched in my memory.

A group of 37 scouts, plus our 3 leaders and our Trailways bus driver, left for the 5-day drive across country, from Philadelphia, Pa, to Philmont. That's 5 days each way, plus 12 days at Philmont. Our bus was the newest Trailways had. There were only 3 of that type of bus then (I believe it was called the Golden Eagle) and ours was the one on the Trailways postcard. Each night we stopped at an army or air force base for dinner and breakfast, and to sleep. They also gave us packed lunches. The food on base was always good and plentiful - all you could eat, but you had to eat everything you took. Sleeping wasn't always as good. One night we slept in an airplane hangar on cots and we didn't dare go the bathroom - plenty of roaches on the floor. But we did enjoy the bases - especially after so many hours on a bus. One of the bases was Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. I remember that as the best base.

Since this was 1960, one of the terrible events of the trip was stopping at a gas station in Mississippi to use the bathroom, and being told we couldn't use it because there were blacks in our group. At least they were polite about it, so we didn't feel any fear. That must have been because we were Boy Scouts.

At Philmont, we split up into 3 groups. Our group took the more difficult route - it had less water and more mountains. We were given a mule for the trek over the mountains. My map does not indicate the direction we took, but we spent 4 nights at the Indian Writings, one night at each of the Sioux Trail Camp, Pueblano Trail Camp, New Dean Trail Camp, and two nights at each of the Harlan Trail Camp, Cimarroncito Base Camp, and Camping Headquarters.

My buddy and I were often way ahead of the rest of our group, even though he pulled the mule. The others were taking many rest stops, but we kept going. We felt that resting only made it harder to hike again. Of course, eventually, we had to wait for them. My buddy and I used to skip dinners, and sneak food into our tent for the night, in order to avoid after dinner cleanup. But that stopped when we arrived at a campsite and were told a bear had visited it the night before. The days were very hot and the nights were near freezing. As the sun came up, we could step back and forth between the sun and shade, between very hot and very cool. Almost every afternoon it rained like clockwork. My buddy and I were 15 years old and were growing facial hair. We didn't shave because we didn't want to use cold water, we wanted warm water for that. Finally, our leader told us he'd shave us if we didn't; so we gave in. When we finally reached a campsite over the mountain, we were told we had made the fastest trek over it yet. After all the dehydrated food we ate, we had a treat that night when a ranger made 2 peach cobblers for us. Was that great.

The biggest thrill on the way home was stopping at the President Truman Library in Missouri, and having President Truman come out and greet us and take photos with us.

I sure wish I could remember more and had those photos.