Scouters Upgrade Camp, Name It for President Kimball

During the past two years, LDS Boy Scouts and their leaders in southern Nevada have improved a camp facility to increase its capacity by more than ten times. As a result of their efforts, the camp has been renamed in honor of President Spencer W. Kimball.

On Sunday, 30 October 1988, Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone of the First Quorum of the Seventy formally dedicated the Spencer W. Kimball Scout Reservation twenty-five miles southwest of Las Vegas. Formerly Camp Potosi, the reservation is 1,120 acres of high desert land on the southwest flank of Mt. Potosi.

Working weekends with their fathers and leaders, LDS Scouts added sixty-eight troop campsites to the original five sites, for a total of seventy-three. The expansion and development included increasing the water storage capacity from five thousand gallons to sixty thousand, blazing and grooming fifteen miles of fully improved trails, and building an amphitheater that will accommodate three thousand people.

Nevada Scout executive Dan Gasparo commented, “The forty-thousand manhours of labor and $250,000 funding provided by members of the LDS Church have accelerated the development of this great reservation by at least ten years.”

The dedication of the camp was the highlight of a five-day “Firm as the Mountains” LDS encampment, attended by more than 2,600 Scouts and Scouters. At the dedication, sculptor Ray R. Fullmer, a member of the Las Vegas Sixty-seventh Ward, donated a large bronze bust of President Kimball, which will be displayed at the entrance of the reservation.

Correspondent: Melvin J. Wilcox, Communications Coordinator, Southern Nevada Multiregion Public Communications Council.

Scouts and leaders lift into place the sign at the entrance of the Spencer W. Kimball Scout Reservation. (Photo by M. J. Wilcox.)