James West, the Boy Scouts’ first chief executive, was emphatic that the Scouts and their camps remain the exclusive domain of males—a place for the kind of rugged masculinity Teddy Roosevelt espoused. And while West acknowledged that girls’ camps were also beginning to burgeon, he insisted that they remain wholly separate from male organizations. (While serving as the head of a national organization of camp directors, he also famously insisted that any director of a girl’s camp, regardless of that director’s gender, not be allowed admittance into his professional organization.)
