Old Cabin, Jockey Hollow Girl Scout Camp

The year 1923 saw the formation of the Morristown Girl Scout Council. In 1924, council purchased a bathing beach at Indian Lake in Denville to become the first council day camp, which opened in 1926. Funds for the camp were raised through Girl Scouts who conducted weekly food sales.

In 1923, the national organization chartered a local council to the Morris County Girl Scouts. Its mission was to establish “cordial relations” with existing councils and to organize new troops and enlist the services of captains (known today as leaders). The council also offered something very special to girls, a two-week resident camp at Jefferson Lake. Camp Aimes offered girls instruction in crafts, boating, swimming, hiking, first aid, nature, athletics, story-telling and “practical talks around the campfire.”

In 1928, the council hired its first full-time director, Margaret DeLano, and rented its first office on the second floor of the Women’s Club at 51 South Street in Morristown. In 1929, the first council day camp was opened at Jockey Hollow and was attended by 18 girls at a cost of five cents a day. It was held on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with Wednesdays and Fridays as rain dates. The following year, the Morris County Council began to cover troops in Boonton, Chatham, Chester, Denville, Dover, Gillette, Lincoln Park, Madison, Millington, Morris Plains, Rockaway, Stirling, Mt. Tabor, Towaco and Wharton, as well as Morristown.

By 1932, there were 592 Girl Scouts in Morris County. Interest in Girl Scouting had grown to such an extent that the Morristown Girl Scout Council asked the national organization to disband the local councils and charter a new Morris Area Girl Scout Council. This new charter was granted in 1934 and added Girl Scouting in the towns of Basking Ridge, Brookside, East Hanover, Gillette, Hanover, Long Valley, Mendham, Millington, Montville, Mountain Lakes, Rockaway Valley, Stanhope and Succasunna. The council was organized into three districts – north, central and south, and met monthly.

The 1930s were important years for camping at Morris Area Girl Scout Council. The first Camp Mogisca was opened in July 1930 at Lake Kanaukee at Bear Mountain in Harriman, N.Y. That year, Florence Hartley, a camper from Millington, won a $5 prize in the contest to name the camp. Her entry, MOGISCA, was an abbreviation of “Morris Girl Scouting Camp.” Four years later, in 1934, the Morristown Rotary Club presented the council with a log cabin at the edge of Jockey Hollow Park. In 1945, Lloyd Smith of Florham Park, who owned the land on which the cabin stood, donated six acres to the council. In 1950, he deeded an additional six acres near Old Cabin to build a swimming pool. In 1954, Mr. Smith deeded an additional 200 acres to the Girl Scouts, which became the site of Jockey Hollow Day Camp as we know it today.

Membership grew rapidly throughout the 1940s and 1950s, and by 1965, there were 11,229 Girl Scouts in the county. Facilities at Jockey Hollow were expanded to include the construction of Fingarr Lodge in 1961 and Wafer Hill (named for all the cookies sold by Girl Scouts that paid for it) in 1967. And in the summer of 1970, the new Camp Mogisca, 1,005 pristine wooded acres in Glen Spey, N.Y. opened to receive its first campers.

The council has had many “homes” over the past 80 years. From the original office over the Woman’s Club in Morristown, it has been located on South Street, back to the Woman’s Club, then to 66 Macculloch Avenue, and several miles away at the Cultural Center at 300 Mendham Road in Morristown until 1991, when it moved to its current location at 1579 Sussex Turnpike, Randolph. In 2002, a satellite office opened at the Morris County Organization for Hispanic Affairs. Another satellite office opened at the Neighborhood House in Morristown in Spring 2003.

Morris Area Girl Scout Council now serves 13,500 girls between the ages of 5 and 17, and 8,895 adults in 31 communities in Morris County.