History
Main article Philmont History Wealthy oil magnate and wilderness enthusiast Waite Phillips amassed a large part of the old Beaubien and Miranda land grant in the 1920s, totaling over 300,000 acres (1,200 km2). Phillips built a large residence in the lowlands of Philmont. He turned the ranch into a private game reserve for himself and friends, and built a number of hunting lodges and day-use camps. Phillips sometimes allowed others including a few Boy Scout troops to visit his ranch. He was so impressed with the Scouts that in 1938 he donated 35,857 acres (145.11 km2) of his land to the Boy Scouts of America. In 1941, Phillips added more Philmont property, including the Villa Philmonte, bringing the total to 127,395 acres (515.55 km2). Facilities surrounding the Villa Philmonte were built and it became the National Training Center of the Boy Scouts of America in 1950. Tours are now offered of the Villa Philmonte, as the residence is now a museum instead of being used as classrooms.
Read more about this topic: Philmont Training Center
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“Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books.”
—Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
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