A Brief History of Camp Cachalot:
Recent History, and Cachalot Today
Towards the close of the 1990s, Moby Dick Council began to preemptively discuss a merger with the Councils it was involved with for SEMCA, and somewhat later in four-way merger discussions with those Councils plus the Old Colony Council. These talks did not lead to an actual merger, as the representatives of the four Councils were never able to arrive at a plan that was amenable to their respective Executive Boards, so SEMCA continued in the same state it had been in.
In 2002, Moby Dick Council's Scout Executive, Gerald Monahan, retired. It was at this point that the Council was informed that no new executive would be hired to replace him, and without a Scout Executive no charter for the Council could be issued. Soon after, Narragansett Council approached the Moby Dick Executive Board with an offer to merge, keeping the two existing districts as districts of the merged Council, and maintaining Cachalot as a property of the new Council. The Board accepted, and the Moby Dick Council ceased to be, with final approval coming with an act of the Massachusetts State Legislature [1] in September of 2003.
Cachalot is unique among the eight camps operated by the Narragansett Council, as it is the only camp actually owned by the Council. The remaining seven camps are owned by the Rhode Island Boy Scouts (RIBS) but operated by the Council. The Rhode Island Boy Scouts are one of the multiple Scouting organizations in the United States that merged with the early Boy Scouts of America [2], but unlike other such organizations never relinquished ownership of the camps they operated.
In addition to the Councils themselves merging, a new Order of the Arrow lodge was formed out of Narragansett's Wincheck Lodge (#534) and Moby Dick's Neemat Lodge (#124). Unlike the previous Noquochoke/Agawam Lodge merger, it was possible to take any open lower number for the newly formed Lodge, and not just the older Neemat number. The result is Abnaki Lodge #103.
Recent construction in Camp includes a set of 3-season cabins built mainly to house the summer camp staff, dubbed "Magee Village", the addition of a shower facility on the back side of the Trading Post, and the siding of the Trading Post in rough-edged wood siding to better fit in with other buildings in Camp. Work also continues on completing the build-out of modern shower and latrine facilities in all of the summer camp sites, with the most recent addition being made in 2005.
Cachalot Today
As of 2005, Camp Cachalot operates both year-round programs, a summer camp program open both to Scouts from the SEMCA member councils and Scouts from non-SEMCA councils. Chris Rooney was the Reservation Director for the 2005 summer camp season, his second year in that role. Karrie Dumais is in her fifth year as our resident Ranger.
The Cachalot District, which covers the area that once was the Cachalot Council, served 1,377 youth at the end of 2004, with Chris Rooney as District Executive. The Massasoit District, which covers the area that once was the Massasoit Council, served 787 youth in that same time period. Peter Ashworth, himself a former Cachalot staffer, is currently the District Executive.
Cachalot itself has completed its 60th consecutive summer camp season, with 45 staffers serving 483 youth. Cachalot even played host to a number of units displaced from Narragansett's Camp Yawgoog by an unexpected (and temporary) closure in 2005, with members of the Alumni Association pitching in to help welcome and orient these first-time Cachalot visitors.
We've had 60 years of memories — here's to 60 more!
< Previous: The 1990s[1] Chapter 70 of the Acts of 2003, required because of then-current Massachusetts law preventing mergers of Massachusetts-based charitable organizations with organizations based outside of Massachusetts.
[2] The Rhode Island Boy Scouts were formed in the summer of 1910, just after the Boy Scouts of America (its founders were unaware that the BSA had been formed when RIBS was established). It was 1917 when RIBS merged with the BSA. There were other organizations similar to RIBS, some of which predated the BSA, that merged with the early BSA, including Dan Beard's "Sons of Daniel Boone".
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This page was last modified on Mon Sep 17th 2018.
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