COUNTYWIDE : Girl Scouts’ Camp Project Nears Finish

A $4.2-million expansion of the Orange County Girl Scouts’ camp in the San Jacinto Mountains is expected to be finished in May, after five years of work.

“We like to think of it as the camp that cookies built,” said Mona Ware, executive director of the council.

Fully $2.7 million of the funds for the camp expansion came from the sale of Girl Scout cookies in Orange County over the past five years, Ware said. The rest came from a two-year fund-raising campaign.

Camp Scherman in Riverside County accommodates 8,500 Girl Scouts and volunteers annually of Orange County’s 22,000 Girl Scouts and 11,400 adult volunteers, making it the most heavily used Girl Scout camp in the United States.

The camp, which is being expanded from 560 acres to 700 acres, offers everything from “theater in the woods” to survival and forestry protection classes.

It is so popular with Girl Scouts, though, that the council has to use a lottery system to determine who may attend, Ware said.

“This expansion won’t accommodate all the girls that want to come,” Ware said, “but it will go a long way towards meeting a lot of expectations.”

As part of the expansion, the council completed a 101-tent camp site, which more than 2,500 girls attend annually. It also added a four-acre lake for canoeing, sailing and even windsurfing. Currently, a training center that can hold up to 120 adult volunteers is being installed.

The council, headquartered on Adams Avenue in Costa Mesa, is one of largest of 334 councils nationwide, Ware said.