Scrapbooks and boxes of memories hold special older-family-member keepsakes from historic visits to Colorado Springs during two large Boy Scout and Girl Scout anniversaries in 1959 and 1960.

Perhaps the next generations, possibly many of them Scouts as well, have seen the pictures and heard the stories and visited the sites just piecing together pages of local or Scouting history or maybe visiting during vacation trips.

For the Boy Scouts it was honoring the 50th year of Scouting in America with their fifth annual Jamboree July 22-29, 1960. Scouts arrived from every state and from 26 other countries for “Onward for God and My Country.”

On 4 square miles of 2,500 open-range acres and a ranch, Reverse J Diamond, southeast of the Air Force Academy, the area military and planners built a temporary tent city for 56,377 Scouts so large and complete it was called Colorado’s fourth largest city. At the end of the Jamboree, more than 25,000 visitors were there for Parents’ Day. Other times there were hundreds of other guests. The site had a full 60-acre field hospital.

A church service as the activities were starting drew 30,000 Scouts.

During the Jamboree the Gazette-Telegraph reported that Scouts cooked meals over charcoal fires, sometimes 16,000 campfires going at a time. There were more than 1,278,000 meals prepared during the Jamboree.

A number of celebrities visited the busy Western site including President Dwight D. Eisenhower, actor James Arness of “Gunsmoke,” Roy Rogers, Lorne Greene and Dan Blocker of “Bonanza” and even the Lennon Sisters from “The Lawrence Welk Show.” The local Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo folks put on a full rodeo.

According to the newspaper, in August after the site was fully returned to open acres, Colorado Springs turned into a shoppers’ delight as Ross Auction raised the gavel for many thousands of tents, benches, cooking utensils and much more.

For those searching for the actual location of the former Jamboree tent city, now you know why there are northeast city streets named Jamboree and Explorer Drive. The plaque designating the site is on a boulder at a spot with majestic bronze wild mustangs by famed sculptor T.D. Kelsey at Voyager and Briargate parkways. They were commissioned by John Venezia, Briargate developer, in 1987.

Over 130,000,000 Americans have been been in the organization’s programs since 1910. Boy Scouts became Scouting America starting in 2025 after changes and the 2018 addition of girls in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts.

The Jamboree was the second major Scouting event in our area in one year. A year before, in 1959, more than 8,000 Girl Scouts had been near that same area for the Senior Scout Roundup.

The Roundups, for top chosen high school Girl Scouts from around the country, were common in the 1950s and 1960s. A weathered wood sign remains at the Roundup spot just east off northbound I-25 near InterQuest Parkway.

From July 3 to July 12 Scouts camped out in tents they had brought or sent to what was then open range land. All the girls wore Girl Scout “greenies” and brought souvenirs from their home states to share.

Like the Jamboree, campers grilled their meals. Girls hand-washed their uniforms ,which were hung out to dry in the Colorado sunshine.

Roundups were considered the ultimate in a Scout’s career and encampments drew hundreds of guests. Memories fill scrapbooks and now social media.

“