History of Camp Billy Gibbons
1931 - 2000
Camp Billy Gibbons is located on Brady Creek south of Richland Springs, TX and is one of the older camps in this area. The camp belongs to the Comanche Trail Council, BSA, headquarters in Brownwood, Texas.
The first summer camp to be held on the Billy Gibbons ranch was in the summer of 1931. The camp fee was $5.50 per person. The Scouts had permission to hike and explore over the some 50,000 acre ranch. The camp was a tent camp with no permanent buildings of any kind. There was a brush arbor put up for the cooks to use in preparing meals, and there was a tent to eat in. Some 100 Scouts and leaders attended this camp. An old "Popping Johnny" gasoline engine and pump supplied water for the camp from Brady Creek. Uncle Billy Gibbons, as he was affectionately known to the Scouts, said that he would give a 99 year lease for this spot for a summer camp area to the then Pecan Valley Council for free.
A dining hall was added to the camp. It was decided by the new Comanche Trail Council, that the dining hall, that belonged to the old Oil Belt Council, located on the Llano River at then Camp Martin, be moved to the new camp site on Brady Creek. It was quite an ordeal. They took drawing pens and marked all the boards on the south side of the building with an "S", on the east with an "E", etc., until all four sides were marked. Moving trucks were loaded and when they arrived at the Brady Creek site they unloaded the lumber and rebuild the building easily. This first dining hall was a wooden structure with a tin roof and a screen band around the middle of the wall. Gravel was used for the floor.
Flood Hits Camp
During the summer camp of 1937 a big flood hit the camp. It was just at the end of the first week of camp, with another week to follow, when a head rise of several feet of water came down Brady Creek. It all started when one of the Scouts told Guy Quirl, the Camp Director, and said the creek is rising. He knew some of the Scouts were on the other side of the creek, so he sent a runner to tell them that he wanted them to come to camp in a hurry so they wouldn't get caught on the other side. They arrived and he had the camp bugler blow assembly in the mess hall. He told them that they were to stay on high ground on the upper bank. It wasn't long until a four foot wall of water came down. The it just kept rising. He had a feeling that it might get to the mess hall so he ahd the cooks start cooking up all the flour they had into biscuits. Stanley, the head cook, was putting them in the pans and Tom, the assistant cook, was putting them in the oven and taking them out. Stanley was singing "River Stay Away From My Back Door"; but Tom was so nervous he could hardly handle the pans.
When it seemed that the water was going to get to the mess hall we moved all the cooking equipment and tents to higher ground. We were using Army supply field ranges for cooking stoves. The second day a Coast Guard plane flew over and dropped a message by a little parachute stating that we were to move to higher ground as a flood was coming.
They had sixty-four Scouts, one Scoutmaster, one truck driver, two cooks, and the camp director in camp. They inventoried their food supply and decided they were in trouble. The second morning at breakfast the Camp Director took a vote for them to sleep late and have breakfast and lunch at the same time to conserve their food supply. It rained for five days and nights.
They kept in touch with the outside world with the telephone. The Coast Guard would fly over each day and they would get out in a clearing and form "O.K." with white camp T-shirts on. They would report it to the radio station in Brady and the station would broadcast that the camp signaled "O.K." and they could see our fires burning.
The Camp Director got Mr. Roundtree to take a pack horse and go across ranch country to Brady and get bacon, flour, and eggs, etc. He made two trips for the camp of about 12 miles.
Much of the quipment and building at camp were destroyed or damaged to a degree including the old dining hall. A new one was built in with a concrete floor, rock walls and a shingle roof.
Camp Bulldozed
The camp was destroyed in 1945 by the new land owners after Billy Gibbons died. They thought the lease on the land had expired so bulldozed all the trees off the twenty-five acre plot for better grazing. They were mistaken and eventually settled for $12,500 for damages.
John Gibbons, the older son of Billy Gibbons, who was also a member of the Executive Board of the Council, told the board that he would give them a campsite further up Brady Creek for the camp. The area was known as "The Blue Hole" and had a nice long pool in the creek. The "new Camp Billy Gibbons" consisted of 105 acres, and fifty years later is still referred to as the "new camp!" The camp was given to the council in 1947.
The first thing they did was build a 13 mile dirt road to the camp with a bull dozer. Then a well was drilled 105 feet deep and a dam built across Brady Creek to create a quarter of a mile lake for swimming, canoeing and boating. The dining hall was built using a rock mason, one carpenter and senior Scouts. They had four donkeys and four sleds that the Scouts used to bring in surface rocks picked up in the pasture. The 40 by 140 foot concrete slab was poured using a mixer that was hand driven. It took them forever to finish the floor. Electricity was not brought into the camp until the fall of 1959.
Over the Years
Not much has been added to the camp since then. The present Gee Lodge was built by the Otena Lodge, Order of the Arrow. The building was started in 1958 and finally completed and dedicated in the summer of 1963. In order to raise the money for the materials for the Lodge they had OA members pay their dues five years in advance. An arbor was built in front of the dining hall which later became the camp trading post. The camp has central hot showers and flush commodes with pit latrines and warm showers (during the day) on each campsite.
Camp Billy Gibbons now has third generation Scouts attend summer camp and swim in the same place as their grandfather swam. The camp is considered the last of the summer wilderness camps in this area. One must drive down a thirteen mile gravel road, over fourteen cattle guards, in order to get to the camp. Some claim that when the county grades the road to camp that all they do is sharpen the flint stone in the roadbed as many people get flats when the road is graded. The camp is located fifteen miles SW of Riceland Springs, Texas on Brady Creek.
The summer camp has a full program of aquatics, scoutcraft, conservation, archery, rifle and hiking. Some 200 Scouts participate in the camp each summer, learning how to set up their tents in very rocky ground and keeping the raccoons out of their campsite at night! The ground is so rocky that one troop drilled holes and put in eye bolts so they had something to tie their tents to. It is truly a unique place to camp and has been for over fifty years.
The camp is maintained by the volunteers and Order of the Arrow members
of the Comanche Trail Council and provides the "glue" that keeps the smallest
Council in the Southern Region going!
Information for this page taken from The Camp Billy Gibbons Story
by Guy N. Quirl and Eldon Sehnert, 1989.
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