Camp Weygadt at the Delaware Water Gap

For many decades, it was said that Camp Minsi started at Camp Weygadt. However, that is  incorrect, and the opposite is true. Camp Minsi was there first. It was the first permanent camp  for Scouts in the Lehigh Valley. Camp Weygadt opened a few years later.

In 1918, the Easton Area Council (later renamed Delaware Valley Area Council) was formed to  serve the Scouts of the Easton and Phillipsburg areas. They also desired a permanent summer  camp for their Scouts. In 1921, the council leased land from the Philadelphia Trust Company  that was a mile south of Camp Minsi. The first year it was called Camp Yarnell, after E. R. Yarnell,  one of the Council’s first Vice Presidents¹.  The camp was called Gishenain in 1922 and 1923 ²,  and finally named Camp Weygadt in 1924 ³.

In 1927, it was announced that the Easton Area Council would be buying the land, including that on which Camp Minsi lay, from the Philadelphia Trust Company. Minsi’s lease expired, and with  no money to purchase the camp, there was no choice but to move. Board members of the  Weygadt Trust, formed to support Camp Weygadt, signed the deed on June 26, 1928.

In 1969, the Delaware Valley Area Council was forced to sell the land to the federal government  for the Tocks Island Dam Project. That same year, the Delaware Valley Area Council, along with  the Lehigh Area Council (formerly called Allentown Area Council), merged with Bethlehem Area  Council to form Minsi Trails Council. The Scouts who attended Camp Weygadt were dispersed to Camp Minsi and Camp Trexler. The Tocks Island Dam was never built, and the land that Camp  Weygadt and many other camps occupied became part of the Delaware Water Gap National  Recreation Area⁴. Remnants of Camp Weygadt remain to this day.