During World War I, America’s Boy Scouts had worked hard on the home front. Not long after the fighting ended, they, too, began going “over there.”.

In 1920, 301 American Scouts traveled to the inaugural World Scout Jamboree in England, where they joined Scouts from 33 other countries in offering a war-weary world a vision of peace and goodwill.

Paul A. Siple

 The 1920s also saw the creation of the Silver Buffalo Award for distinguished service to youth. Among the first recipients were Scouting founders Robert Baden-Powell, Ernest Thompson Seton, Daniel Carter Beard, and William D. Boyce, along with the unknown Scout who had assisted Boyce during his 1909 visit to London.

Sea Scouts

Scouts expanded their horizons in other ways as well during the decade. In 1923, the Region X Canoe Trails program began offering Scouts canoeing adventures in the Boundary Waters area along the U.S.–Canada border. (The program later evolved into the Northern Tier National High Adventure Base.) A year later, the Lone Scouts of America merged with the BSA, offering boys in remote areas a way to participate in Scouting.

But the organization’s outreach efforts weren’t limited to boys in far-flung villages. In 1927, the BSA created the Inter-Racial Service to promote Scouting in the African American, Native American, Hispanic, and Japanese communities.

In 1928, Sea Scout Paul Siple accompanied Commander Richard Byrd on an 18-month voyage to Antarctica, starting a tradition that lives on in the BSA Antarctic Scout Scientific Program. (Siple would eventually become the first scientific leader of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and coin the term wind chill.)

 
(Source: BSA 2010 Decades Fact Sheet - 1920)