Jamboree Road named after the 1953 Boy Scout Jamboree

The idea for a national gathering of Boy Scouts was the brainchild of Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting movement in England, who also named the event “jamboree.” The first jamboree in the United States was held in 1937 in Washington D.C. and attracted 25,000 scouts. The first such gathering in California was at the Irvine Ranch in 1953 in what was then Santa Ana (today it is Irvine). The event brought over 50,000 Boy Scouts to Orange County, not just from most of the U.S. states, but also from other countries such as Mexico and Sweden. Below are a few photographs from the Irvine Ranch Jamboree. Myford Irvine, President of the Irvine Company at that time, made the jamboree site available and furnished much of the road equipment, personnel and facilities for the jamboree. Richard Nixon, who was Vice President of the United States, made a speech welcoming the scouts. Photographs are from the Hugh R. McMillan Photographs, 1946-1974. MS-R035. Many of the photographs are available from UCISpace here: http://ucispace.lib.uci.edu/handle/10575/9882