VAN NUYS : Scouts Celebrate 80-Year Anniversary

When the San Fernando Valley’s first Boy Scout troop was formed 80 years ago, Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States and the first rumblings of what was to become World War I were being heard in Europe.

That Scouts would one day clean up graffiti and be looked to as an alternative to life in the deadly world of street gangs was unimaginable.

On Saturday, Boy Scout Troop 1 celebrated 80 years of continuous scouting Saturday night with a dinner at the First United Methodist Church of Van Nuys, which has been the troop’s sponsor since 1913.

“Very, very few troops have been continually active for that long,” said troop secretary Miriam Adler. “So the feeling was one of great pride.”

Troop 1, whose origins predate the formation of the Los Angeles Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America by two years, began as Troop 122, but was renamed when the San Fernando Valley Council was formed in 1923.

It is considered among the oldest continuously active Scout troops in the Western states. Membership, however, has been declining, Adler said, and the troop plans to recruit more aggressively.

The Methodist Church formed Troop 1 in response to the 1912 West Coast promotional visit of an official of the New York Council. Scouting soon swept California, with councils opening in most major cities between 1915 and 1920.