Original Site of White Stag Program
During the summer of 1958, Monterey Bay Area Council Training Chairman Béla H. Bánáthy experimented with the idea of training boys in leadership skills during a week of summer camp at Pico Blanco Scout Reservation. The Council actively supported his experiment. Assistant Scout Executive, Esselen Lodge Staff Adviser, and Camp Director Bill Lidderdale served as staff advisor to the White Stag Leadership Development Program that Bánáthy founded. The council's program was so successful that it drew attention from the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America. In 1964, National BSA executives, volunteers, and board members attended a meeting at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, California. As a result of this meeting, the National Council began a thorough study of the Monterey Bay Area Council's program.
Up to this point, junior leaders training had been focused on Scoutcraft skills and use of the Patrol Method. The National Council concluded that offering leadership development to youth was a unique opportunity for Scouting to provide a practical benefit to youth and would add substantial support to Scouting's character development goals. By the end of 1974, both the adult Wood Badge and junior leader training had undergone fundamental shifts, focusing on teaching specific leadership skills instead of Scoutcraft, outdoor living skills, and the Patrol Method. National council professional staff visited the council and Pico Blanco Scout Reservation several times to view the White Stag program in action and to evaluate the council program's success.
In 1975, volunteer Scouters leading the White Stag program invited Explorer-age girls 14 years of age or older to take part in the program. In the next few years, Girl Scouts were also invited. In 1978, the Monterey Bay Area Council Executive decided they were uncomfortable with a coed program and refused to allow the volunteer Scouters to rent Pico Blanco Scout Reservation the next summer. The White Stag program was held for the next 17 years at various camps in Northern California. In 1994, Council Training Chairman Steve Cardinalli approached the Council Executive with the idea of allowing local White Stag alumni and volunteer Scouters to run both the official National Youth Leadership Training (NYLT) and a White Stag program at the camp. The council embraced the program once again until 2005 when a new Council Executive decided the Council would only offer the nationally sanctioned NYLT program. The Monterey-area Scout volunteers incorporated the non-profit White Stag Academy to administer the program locally. The leadership program continues to sponsor a Boy Scout troop and a Venturing Crew in the Monterey Council, and is headquartered at the Paul Sujan Scout Lodge on the Presidio of Monterey, California. Summer camp is usually held in the nearby Santa Cruz Mountains. As of 2011 the program had taught leadership skills to approximately 20,500 largely Monterey County youth. A second organization, the White Stag Association, continues to sponsor a smaller summer camp program in the San Francisco East Bay. Its camp is usually held at Scout camps in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Read more about this topic: Pico Blanco Scout Reservation
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