Miakonda's Crows Nest Flagpole
⎯⎯⎯
John St. Clair Mendenhall

Miakonda's Crows Nest Flagpole, also, John St. Clair Mendenhall. ⚜️. Miakonda's Crows Nest Flagpole. From 1921 through 1964 there existed at Camp Miakonda a very tall and unique camp flagpole. It was at one time the main mast off a Great Lakes freighter. It was donated by the Pittsburgh Steamship Company and erected by the American Bridge Company in 1921. The flagpole was approximately 75 feet tall and had cables attached to its top that were each anchored onto the ground below to stabilize it in high winds. Half way up, it had a round crows nest where before the advent of radar, a sailor would be perched 24 hours a day to look out for other ships and obstacles so that they did not run into them. The flagpole was officially called "The Lookout". The flagpole was located about forty feet from our museum building in central camp. The camp bugler would climb and descend the flagpole five times a day. In the early morning he would sound the bugle to awaken the sleeping Scouts, then sound off three other times during the day to alert the campers that it was time to eat and finally he would sound taps at night to signal it was time to sleep. In 1964 a new Scout bugler named John Pollock fell from the crows nest and was nearly killed. It was deemed a hazard and dismantled. It remained at Miakonda until Camp Frontier was being built in Pioneer, Ohio. It was buried in front of Reservational Headquarters there and used as a drain culvert for many years., John St. Clair Mendenhall. Chief Mendenhall was our first full time Council Executive and served here from 1914-1919 during which the original camp acreage for Miakonda was purchased in 1917. He came here from the Kansas City Council and was brought here after a tragic incident at the Council summer encampment in 1914 when the part time Council Executive, James Ecker, and two Scouts, Glenwood Albert and Paul Graves, all drowned. Chief Mendenhall was a man of great enthusiasm and creativity who brought a very high level of professionalism to Scouting in Toledo in 1914. He organized the first council "high adventure” trip in 1919 when a group of nineteen Toledo Eagle Scouts took a six week trip to the East Coast by way of Ford Model T automobiles. It was the first of many annual Eagle Scout trips in the Council. Those trips that followed were wilderness canoe trips in north Michigan. Chief Mendenhall brought national acclaim to our council through his Tribe of Gimogash program for older boys which he founded in 1914. It produced many early Eagle Scouts in Toledo. He was the 63rd Eagle Scout in National BSA history having received the honor in 1913. Rank advancement and Scouting in general soared became here after he became our Council Executive. After he left Scouting he eventually became a national official with the fledgling Junior Achievement organization then later became a teacher. He was born in Paris, Kentucky and died in New York.