Scouts from the Chief Cornplanter Council at Irvine in 1917

It’s not often that a local organization reaches a notable milestone on the national stage. The Chief Cornplanter Council of the Boy Scouts of America will do just that this summer when it celebrates its 95th anniversary. The significance? Those 95 years makes Warren County’s Boy Scout council the oldest Scouting council in the United States. The Chief Cornplanter Council traces its roots back to a pre-Scouting movement that took place in the county in 1910. On a national level, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) was founded that same year. Three years later, the county received an official charter from the Boy Scouts, creating the Warren County Council. In the fall of 1910, two local men, Bob MacKay and Norman Davis, organized a hike for a group of YMCA boys through Oakland Cemetery and down Ott Run. This hike formed the nucleus for the founding of an officially sanctioned BSA council in Warren County. Enter a young Latin teacher named W. LeRoy MacGowa.