Ohio’s oldest Boy Scout camp and the sixth oldest in America is turning 100 years old.

Camp Miakonda, 5600 W. Sylvania Ave., Sylvania Township, is getting a centennial birthday party from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. For details, go to the event’s Facebook page, bit.ly/ 2qMU8vS, or call the Erie Shores Council Boy Scouts office at 419-241-7293.

The camp began with the purchase of a 78.5-acre farm on May 23, 1917, for $12,000. Three other parcels were added between then and 1953, expanding the property to 210 acres.

Camp historian Dave Eby said the site was a two-hour drive from downtown Toledo in 1917, a combination of the area being so undeveloped and early automobiles being so slow.

“It was kind of like wilderness when they bought it,” Mr. Eby said.

Camp Miakonda gets its name from a Native American word that means “land of the crescent moon.” The site was originally called DeVilbiss Scout Reservation in honor of its first major benefactor, industrialist Thomas A. DeVilbiss, who — among other things — invented the paint spray gun.

Scouts simply referred to the site as “The Reservation” until 1924, when they created a summer camp program called Camp Miakonda. The name stuck.

The facility operated as a Boy Scouts camp until 1972, when the Erie Shores Council moved those activities out for good to Camp Frontier at the Pioneer Scout Reservation near Pioneer, Ohio. Camp Miakonda has since been used mostly for a combination of day activities for Scouts of all ages.

The first building erected at Camp Miakonda still stands. Originally the headquarters building, it is now used as a museum. Its oldest cabin, erected in 1918, is next to it.

“It was one of the best camps in the country at one point,” said Frank Merritt, a retired University of Toledo law school professor and longtime Scouts volunteer. “It is still very impressive.”

Camp Miakonda is unique because a metropolitan area grew up around it.

“When you’re inside it, you forget you’re in a city,” Mr. Eby said.

It once had a tipi village. Native Americans came from other parts of the country to teach Toledo-area youths how to live off the land.

It had a pool billed as the world’s longest, originally measuring 75 feet wide and 300 feet long. By the time the pool was walled with concrete in 1931, it was expanded to 480 feet long and held an amazing 1.3 million gallons of spring-fed water. There were multiple diving boards, a diving tower, and piers. The camp also had elaborate tree houses from 1934 to 1950.

Many of Camp Miakonda’s first buildings were designed by Great Depression-era architect Paul Robinette, who also designed early structures at the Toledo Zoo.

“Paul Robinette’s stuff was spectacular,” Mr. Merritt said.

Much of the early work was done during the Depression by the Works Progress Administration.

The pool was shut down in 1976. The tree houses were dismantled once wood began to rot. But memories live on, many of which will be rekindled at Saturday’s birthday party.

“There was no other camp like Miakonda in its heyday,” Mr. Eby said.

Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.

First Published May 14, 2017, 4:00 a.m.