Abandoned Girl Scout Camp in Illinois: Old Paperwork, a Pool With Tadpoles and a Girl Scout Van

This camp is pretty trashed, and it is kind of disappointing. It is also a perfect example of why we don’t give out locations. I explored this one with Vato, who has his own channel.

The wood over the openings had been taken off multiple times by other people. The exact location stays off this page.

What we found

The first thing I found was paperwork, adult registration forms for the Girl Scouts. There was a red splatter on it, and I want to make a quick disclaimer, because I found out it was not blood. Somebody broke the door open, and it got all over the paperwork. There was some on the wall too, and I wondered if it was even real. The Girl Scout promise is written on a wall nearby.

Then the camp opens up. There is a house over there, and an old basketball hoop up above. Somebody had bolted a whole door shut with a pretty heavy duty chain, and somebody else had cut a hole through the wall next to it.

Inside the cabins there are a lot of beds, in rows, and a big old fireplace. There is a kitchen with utensil supplies, and a bed in another room. The mosquitos were around in some spots.

The pool was one of my favorites. It might be an above ground pool, and there is actually stuff living in it, tadpoles and everything. I pointed it out twice. Then the showers, and more fireplaces, and a lot of broken glass.

The last building has a sad little ceiling fan, a crawl space with nothing in it, and a yellow wall with the ceiling panels missing. It is falling apart bad, but I said it looks kind of cool. There was also a Christmas tree. A long trail goes on past it, alongside a creek. I could be wrong and we could be missing something really cool, but I think we covered most of it.

Why places like this end up empty

I don’t know when this camp closed. In general, Girl Scout councils have been selling camps for a long time. A 2011 Marketplace story said membership was down nationally, money was tight and camps were expensive to run. A council board member said low occupancy was part of the problem. Many camps date to the 1940s and 1950s, when troops often had about 30 girls, and today’s troops are much smaller.

The story followed one council that had sold five camps and had five more slated for sale. It estimated that renovating its camps would cost $30 million. A camp that nobody buys, and nobody staffs, sits there with its registration forms in the office.

The paperwork was still here, and so was the Girl Scout van.