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Camp Salmen Nature Park - Slidell, Louisiana

Located on scenic Bayou Liberty near Slidell, Louisiana, Camp Salmen is historically significant for many reasons:

• It consists of land originally awarded as land grants by Spanish governor Estevan Miro in 1785 and 1787
• It hosted a trading post in the Bayou Liberty region which was probably built in the early years of the 1800s
• It is the site of a major ferry across Bayou Liberty which operated from the early 1800s into the early 1900s
• The Salmen Brick and Lumber Co. acquired the property in 1901, and conducted timbering operations there for many years before donating the property to the Boy Scouts in 1924
• The scouts used the property for nearly 60 years as its regional camp reservation for the Greater New Orleans Area

Illuminating the property's heritage is a 200-year-old French Creole-style building, which was probably built in the first decade of the 1800s and served as the major trading post in the Bayou Liberty region for over a century. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.

An enduring scout culture—one which developed from the collective experiences of tens of thousands of young scouts—endures in the shadows of this building, nicknamed Salmen Lodge by the scouts. Dominating the property, however, is a rich ecological endowment of native landscapes and an unusually diverse community of plants and animals, which make the Camp Salmen Nature Park a living museum.

Recently, we opened the park to the public and hope you will use this opportunity to visit. Our plans will take several years to materialize, so we encourage you to follow our progress via this website and learn how you can help support this ambitious undertaking.

We hope you enjoy your tour through history.