Scout Ranch History
The Ben Delatour Scout Ranch was purchased in 1958 from George Weaver who owned it as the Pinecroft Ranch. The first Longs Peak Council event was a camporee held by the Thompson-Poudre District in the spring of 1959. This was followed by the first summer camping season that same year. The original property acreage was somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 acres, and over the decades numerous plots have been added to where today the land owned by the council is 3,400 acres. Several plots within and at the edge of the Scout Ranch were “trade-outs” with the U.S. Forest Service. In these situations the council purchased pieces of ground the Forest Service wanted, and then traded them for pieces within the Scout Ranch.
The history of the Scout Ranch us very rich. The old Zimmerman Stage Trail followed the Elkhorn Creek as it made its way from Log Cabin (the current junction of County Roads 74E and 68C) to the mining town of Manhattan and down to the Poudre Canyon. Several sites of early settles can still be seen on Scout Ranch: the remains of the John Cooke cabin, the old prospect site on the Elkhorn Creek, the Halliday Gravesite, an early sawmill, the remains of the Ashley Grange, and – if you can find them – Native American teepee rings.
With the early Native American, European settler, and Scouting histories, the Ben Delatour Scout Ranch is a magnificent location for Scouting adventures.