In 1909, William D. Boyce, an American newspaperman and entrepreneur, became lost in London and was rescued by a Scout.

The Scout declined a tip, saying he was doing his Good Turn as a Scout. Intrigued, Boyce visited Scouting headquarters to learn more about the program. On February 8, 1910, Boyce filed incorporation papers in Washington, D.C., and the Boy Scouts of America was born.

Ernest Thompson Seton, Sir Robert Baden-Powell, and Daniel Carter Beard

Boyce enlisted the help of Ernest Thompson Seton and Daniel Carter Beard—both of whom had founded their own boys’ organizations—to create an Americanized Scouting program. That program, described in the 1911 Handbook for Boys, was quickly adopted by young people across America.

William D. Boyce

Among the milestones of Scouting’s first decade were the BSA’s first national Good Turn (promoting a safe and sane Fourth of July), the creation of Sea Scouting for older boys and the Order of the Arrow as a brotherhood of honor campers, and the hiring of a young artist named Norman Rockwell at the fledgling Boys’ Life magazine. Among the growing pains were battles with competing organizations, including William Randolph Hearst’s militaristic United States Boy Scouts. (It took an act of Congress in 1916 to get Hearst and company out of the Scouting business.)

As America headed toward war in Europe, Scouts sprang into action. In support of the war effort, they planted 12,000 victory gardens, collected 100 railroad cars of nut hulls and peach pits for gas-mask manufacture, located 21 million board feet of black walnut trees for gunstocks and airplane propellers, distributed more than 300 million pieces of government literature, and sold more than $355 million worth of Liberty Loan bonds and war savings stamps. (That’s more than $5 billion in 2009 dollars.)

(Source: BSA 2010 Decades Fact Sheet - 1910)