Even though it’s quietly tucked away in the foothills of the Swan Mountains among shimmering lakes, the Boy Scouts Grizzly Base Camp has become a bustling place over the last few years, the direct result of the Melita Island camp on Flathead Lake becoming a wildly popular destination for Scouts.

To accommodate an increasingly busier schedule, some significant improvements have been underway recently at Grizzly Base Camp on LaBrant Road.

An anonymous donor provided funding to purchase eight new staff cabins that have been set up and prepared for the summer season.

“The donor saw the old cabins and wanted to help,” said Jim Atkinson, Grizzly Base Camp director.

Those cabins can still be used, but they have been around since the mid-1970s, when Grizzly Base Camp was started with a convergence of equipment and supplies from several Scout camps that had been closed.

A major milestone for the camp came in 2007, when a neighboring landowner arranged for a land swap with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, which managed school trust lands bordering the camp.

The landowner turned over those lands to the camp to form a consolidated tract of 132 acres, including about 14 acres of small lakes that are part of the Echo Lake system. The DNRC acquired shoreline property on Rogers Lake.

“That was the same year that we obtained Melita Island” with the Montana Council of the Boy Scouts purchasing the island after a successful capital campaign, Atkinson said.

In the years that followed, Melita became extremely popular for Scouts from Montana and other states.

“There’s been overwhelming success down on Melita with the programs we’ve been offering,” said Larry Johnson, a Boy Scout backer who was involved with the resurrection of the Melita Island camp.

To make room for Boy Scouts at Melita Island, the decision was made to move the Cub Scouts Webelo Program to Grizzly Base Camp this year. The three-day Webelo camp program is designed to introduce older Cub Scouts to Boy Scout camping.

“This will be the first year we offer to do the Webelos resident camp,” Atkinson said.

But that’s just one group that uses the camp. Several years ago, the camp’s dining hall and kitchen were upgraded with a heated floor.

“It can be used year-round while most Scout camps are closed during the winter season,” Atkinson said.

Grizzly Base Camp also is used by the Ravenwood Outdoor Learning Center, which provides environmental education programs for children.

It is used for an annual “Wood Badge” seven-week advanced Scout leader training course. This will be the first year that the camp will host a National Youth Leadership training course for ages 13 to 20.

Grizzly Base Camp also accommodates Montana scout troops and out-of-state scout troops that use the camp as a launching point for trips into the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex and Glacier National Park.

All-in-all, Atkinson estimates that about 2,000 people use the camp annually, and that number is likely to increase.

“We’re growing in numbers,” he said.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by email at jmann@dailyinterlake.com.