‘We must decide that our camp is worth saving.’ New life could be coming to Camp Golden Pond
Camp Golden Pond has been closed for more than a year, but there is new hope that the longtime Girl Scouts camp could soon see new life.
The camp, located at 5126 Eberle Road in Petersburg, closed in November 2017, when the Girl Scouts in the Heart of Pennsylvania board of directors made the decision to close the camp and several other council-owned properties in an asset re-evaluation process. GSHPA is spread over 30 counties in the middle of the state and represents about 14,000 scouts.
Since its closure, the board of directors of Friends of Golden Pond have been trying to market the property to a third party to potentially reopen the camp.
The camp, first established in 1988, sits on 290 acres of forest land and seven acre Lake Louse in rural Petersburg in Huntingdon County, and had been the home of Girl Scout camp summer retreats for 30 years.
In December 2018, John Sabella purchased the property from GSHPA for $885,000, according to a post from the Friends of Golden Pond, and is open to negotiations to reopen the camp, hopefully for the summer of 2019.
The hope now for the board is to re-purchase the property from Sabella, but it will take all the community support and funding they can get.
On Feb. 24, the Friends of Golden Pond will hold a reception at the property to update the community on the negotiation process. Tours of the property will be given at 2 p.m. and a reception will be held in the Legacy Lodge with light refreshments.
Former scouts and attendees of the camp can submit their own case for reopening the camp by telling their story in a two-minute video and emailing it to contact@friendsofgoldenpond.org along with a signed photo release giving consent to play the video at the reception.
“We cannot stress how important it is that you show your support for our efforts in anyway you can. Our camp will only be saved through the generous donations of individuals like you,” Megan Roberts, friend of Golden Pond, wrong in a blog post. “While we have made great progress toward re-opening our camp, we aren’t there yet. We must decide that our camp is worth saving. You must decide that our camp is worth saving.”
The Friends of Golden Pond also has a GoFundMe page that has so far raised just more than $27,000 for a capital campaign to buy back the camp.
This story was originally published February 15, 2019 at 4:20 PM.