About Us
With a rich history of Scouting that dates back to 1916, the Golden Gate Area Council (GGAC) serves the Northern California Bay Area communities of San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, Lake and Solano Counties and supports more than 700 local packs, troops, teams and crews. The Golden Gate Area Council was formed in April 2020 by the merger of the San Francisco Bay Area Council, the Alameda Council and the Mt. Diablo Silverado Council.
The Council Headquarters is located in Pleasanton, California near the 580 / 680 hwy junction with a satellite office in Alameda. The Golden Gate Area Council maintains five nationally accredited camps: Camp Royaneh (Established 1925) – Located near Cazadero, CA along East Austin Creek and the oldest Scout Camp in California still in operation; Camp Wolfeboro (Established in 1928) – Located east of Angels Camp, CA along the North Fork of the Stanislaus River in the Sierra Nevada Mountains; Camp Herms (Established 1930) – Located at the top of the ridge in the hills above El Cerrito, CA; Rancho Los Mochos (Established 1944) – Located in the hills south of Livermore, CA near Mendenhall Springs and Wente Scout Reservation (Established 1959) – Located in the hills east of Willits, CA with 2200 acres, the largest Scout property in California.
Wente Scout Reservation is located 5 miles east of the Northern California town of Willits and 150 miles north of San Francisco. The property was purchased in 1959 by the Oakland Area Council and held is first summer camp five years later in 1964. Over the years the camp has grown from just a few hundred Scouts the first year to well over 4000 Scouts and Scouters each summer. Wente Scout Reservation operates multiple week long sessions during the summer and each year we host thousands of Scouts from all over the United States including California, Oregon, Texas, Alaska, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Florida. To educate our Scouts we have a highly trained staff of coed youth and young adults from places like Oregon, Utah, Hawaii, Tennessee, Florida, even Taiwan, Chile, Egypt, and France, but mostly the Northern California area. The camp offers over 58 different Merit Badges, with the possibility of more being announced at camp, as well as many awards to earn and lots of activities to partake in that are just fun.
