National Scouting Museum
| National Scouting Museum | |||
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| Location | 1329 West Walnut Hill Lane Irving, Texas |
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| Coordinates | 32°53′08″N 96°58′18″W / 32.8856°N 96.9718°W | ||
| Founded | 1959 | ||
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Website National Scouting Museum |
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The National Scouting Museum, relocating from Irving, Texas to Philmont Scout Ranch, is the official museum of the Boy Scouts of America.
The museum was first opened in 1959 in North Brunswick, New Jersey as the Johnston Memorial Museum. With the relocation of the Boy Scouts of America National Headquarters from New Jersey to Texas, the museum closed in 1979. In 1986 the museum reopened on the campus of Murray State University in western Kentucky.
Museum officials had predicted that 120,000 people annually would visit the Kentucky location, in the Land Between the Lakes area, but by the late 1990s, yearly attendance was under 20,000. In October 2002 the museum moved to its present location in Irving, Texas. The museum closed in Irving on September 4, 2017 and is currently moving to Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, New Mexico and is expected to open in 2018.
The museum in Irving contained 53,000 square feet (4,900 m2) of floor space exhibiting a wide variety of artifacts relating to the history of the Boy Scouts. It also contained displays on activities of the Boy Scouts. Exhibits included paintings by Norman Rockwell and Joseph Csatari, High Adventure, National Scout Jamboree, Order of the Arrow, Scoutcraft through the years, Scout values, Eagle Scouts, and a historical collection tracing uniforms, themes, and documents from the beginning of the Scouting movement in America. Among the museum's artifacts are the Eagle Scout medal of Arthur Rose Eldred, the first Eagle Scout. A focal point of the complex was a man-made mountain structure with virtual-reality features; a screen at the foot of the structure allowed visitors to simulate bike-racing through the mountain or kayaking down its waters.
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