100 Years of ‘Scouting’

on February 21, 2013 in Anniversary, Nostalgia, Scouting

The other day I received my latest copy of Scouting Magazine. (For those of you unfamiliar with that publication, it is the B.S.A.’s official magazine for adult leaders of the Scouting program.) I have always enjoyed reading Scouting and often got a pointer or two from each issue. The cover of this latest edition caught my attention. I did not realize that it is the 100th anniversary of Scouting magazine, but the front cover announces it boldly to the whole world.

According to the Scouting magazine website:

How many magazines do you know that can say they’ve published for 100 years? As of April 2013, you can count Scouting magazine among them. For 100 years, we’ve published more than 900 issues — all with the same goal: serving the BSA’s adult leaders and volunteers.

To celebrate our centennial anniversary, we’ve partnered up with the University of North Texas Digital Projects Unit to digitize every single issue of Scouting that ever rolled off the press.

You can view the initial product from this partnership at scoutingmagazine.org/archives. Here, you’ll see scanned editions of magazines from as early as 1913 to the mid 1920s. Visitors can search these scans, zoom in to examine photographs and illustrations, and read stories that describe issues faced by early Scouters.

http://scoutingmagazine.org/2013/02/welcome-to-the-scouting-magazine-archives/

This got me thinking. I signed up as an assistant scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 68 in May 1980. I have been receiving Scouting Magazine ever since then, for 33 years. That means I own one third of all the Scouting Magazines ever published. Yes, that is correct. I still have them. They are stored in a closet in the basement, along with 33 years of Boy’s Life Magazine. For some reason I never threw them away. A little weird, huh?

Congratulations to the folks at Scouting Magazine! May you have another 100 years worth of issues in your future.

Leave a Reply