Camp McKenzie
Harris County, Harris County, Georgia
Marker Inscription
Camp McKenzie. On this site was Camp McKenzie, a 350 acre tract used for approximately 75 years as the official campsite for the local councils of the Boy Scouts of America. Under the leadership of W. W. McKenzie and Fred H. Schomburg, together with J. Homer Dimon, Jas. B. Key, Dan Joseph, J. Dupont Kirven, H. B. Crowell and J. A. Thomas, Camp McKenzie was incorporated in March 1921. Through the efforts of Frank G. Lumpkin Sr., Sidney Colquitt and many others, funds were raised to purchase the acreage and to construct facilities. ERECTED BY THE OLE SCOUTS OF CAMP MCKENZIE AND THE HISTORIC CHATTAHOOCHEE COMMISSION 1999 [REVERSE] CAMP MCKENZIE. In 1965 a group led by Cason J. Callaway, Jr., donated an additional and adjacent 320-acre tract to the Chattahoochee Council. The new area was named Camp Callaway. In 1955, the Council signed an agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for 900 acres of land on West Point Lake and camping facilities have been moved to that location. This marker is erected to honor those men who had the foresight and the will to make Camp McKenzie and Camp Callaway possible for the thousands of boys who learned to love them both and who will forever hold fond memories of their experiences here. ERECTED BY THE OLE SCOUTS OF CAMP MCKENZIE AND THE HISTORIC CHATTAHOOCHEE COMMISSION 1999
Erected by Historic Chattahoochee Commission
The Story
This 350-acre tract served for roughly 75 years as the official camp of the local Boy Scout councils. Incorporated in 1921 under leaders like W. W. McKenzie and Fred H. Schomburg, the camp was expanded in 1965 when Cason J. Callaway, Jr. helped donate an adjacent tract named Camp Callaway. In the 1950s the council arranged for new camping grounds on West Point Lake, and the marker honors the men whose foresight gave generations of boys a place to learn and grow.
Why it matters
The camp reflects the early-20th-century scouting movement and the community volunteers who built lasting institutions for American youth.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years just after World War I, America was in the grip of a movement to shape its boys into capable, civic-minded young men. The Boy Scouts of America, founded in 1910, spread quickly from the cities into small towns and rural counties, and nowhere did it take root more firmly than in the American South, where church, school, and civic club formed the backbone of community life. A summer camp was the movement's beating heart — a place where boys from town left behind their chores and routines to learn woodcraft, swimming, and self-reliance under the pines.
This corner of Harris County, Georgia, sat in the watershed of the Chattahoochee River, a region of rolling farmland and hardwood forest within reach of Columbus and the surrounding towns. In 1921, when local Scout leaders set out to secure a permanent camp, land here was still affordable and abundant — 350 acres could be assembled and paid for through the pooled generosity of a community that believed in the cause.
The decades that followed, stretching through the Depression, a second world war, and the postwar boom, were the camp's long heyday. For roughly seventy-five years a single tract served generation after generation, its cabins and council rings absorbing the footsteps of thousands of boys.
People & events
The camp's founding reads like a roll call of civic commitment. It was incorporated in March 1921 under the leadership of W. W. McKenzie — whose name the camp carried — and Fred H. Schomburg, joined by a slate of local men: J. Homer Dimon, Jas. B. Key, Dan Joseph, J. Dupont Kirven, H. B. Crowell, and J. A. Thomas. Raising the money to buy the land and build the facilities fell to figures like Frank G. Lumpkin Sr. and Sidney Colquitt, working alongside many neighbors whose names never made it onto the bronze.
The story did not end with the founders. In 1965 a group led by Cason J. Callaway, Jr. donated an adjacent 320-acre tract to the Chattahoochee Council, nearly doubling the camp's footprint. The new ground was christened Camp Callaway, so that for a time the two names stood side by side — one honoring the men who began the work, the other the benefactor who enlarged it.
The marker itself is the work of the "Ole Scouts" — the grown men who had once been boys here — who raised it in 1999 together with the Historic Chattahoochee Commission. That detail matters: this is a memorial written by the campers themselves, decades later, to thank the elders who gave them the place.
Its place in the American story
The tale of Camp McKenzie is, in miniature, the story of how American youth institutions were built — not by governments or corporations, but by local volunteers who believed the next generation deserved something lasting. Across the country in the early twentieth century, Scout councils, Y camps, and church retreats were raised the same way: a few determined leaders, a subscription drive among neighbors, and a tract of land held in trust for boys not yet born.
What happened here in the 1950s also mirrors a national shift. In 1955 the council signed an agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for 900 acres on West Point Lake, and camping moved to that new site. The hand of federal water projects — the dams and reservoirs that reshaped Southern rivers in the mid-century — reached even into the life of a Scout camp, opening new shoreline for recreation as older grounds gave way.
And the impulse to mark the spot decades later speaks to something broadly American: the conviction that ordinary places where character was formed deserve remembrance as surely as battlefields and birthplaces of presidents.
If you visit
Come here understanding that you are standing on ground remembered more than it is seen. The cabins and council fires are long gone, the active camping having moved away generations ago, so what remains is the land itself — 350 acres of Harris County woods that once rang with the voices of boys.
Let the setting do the work. This is river-country Georgia: pine and hardwood, red clay, the kind of quiet that a summer camp was built to offer. If you visit, try to picture the layers the marker describes — the original McKenzie tract and, beside it, the Callaway land added in 1965 — and imagine the decades of campers who knew every trail.
It's a natural stop for anyone tracing the civic history of the Chattahoochee valley or threading together the small landmarks of west-central Georgia. Read the marker slowly; it was written by the men who were once the boys, and it carries the warmth of a thank-you note as much as the weight of a monument.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · W. W. McKenzie
- · Fred H. Schomburg
- · Cason J. Callaway, Jr.
Themes & tags
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