Camp Mahachee Turns 75
2023 is a momentous year for Girl Scouts of Tropical Florida. This year, not only will GSTF celebrate its Centennial, it also celebrates that Camp Mahachee turns 75.
In 1945, with $3,337 ( ~$60,000 today) from cookie sales by troops, the then-named Girl Scouts of Dade County purchased a new campsite next to Matheson County Park from the Arthur Curtis James Estate. After a local naming contest, “Camp Mahachee” became the official name of the 11.5-acre campsite. Mahachee is a Seminole Indian word meaning progressing or growing.
Camp Mahachee, the first Lou Henry Hoover Memorial Conservation project in the United States, was dedicated as a nature sanctuary on June 3, 1945. Through donations of time and money from the community, construction was completed a few years later. On November 7, 1948, the dedication ceremony, attended by 7,000 people, marked the official beginning of countless memories. The camp features shelters, meeting space, cabins and a hardwood hammock, and is used for all kinds of youth activities.
“We continue to be stewards of this incredible property where girls are able to get outdoors safely, see stars at night, hear night noises,” Chelsea Wilkerson, CEO of the Tropical troop, told the City of Coral Gables Commission. “Many of our girls across our jurisdiction don’t have opportunities to be outdoors after dark [but] they can go to a magical place like Camp Mahachee and it opens the world for them.”
Over the past year, with help from Coral Gables Community Foundation, Coral Gables Garden Club and others, Girl Scouts of Tropical Florida has been restoring the camp’s front entrance, which had become overrun with invasives. After removing non-native plants, Girl Scouts and volunteers planted 1,100 trees and more plans are in the works for future tree plantings and a pollinator garden as part of the restoration efforts.
