The Ten Mile River Scout Reservation, at times referred to as the Ten Mile River Boy Scout Camps, or more commonly, T.M.R., is located on the Delaware River, near Narrowsburg, New York. They opened in 1927, the successor to the Kanowahke Lakes Camps, that had closed the summer before. T.M.R. has operated continuously ever since. During its peak, Ten Mile River consisted of more than twelve thousand acres, encompassed a dozen lakes, and operated fourteen camps simultaneously. It could accommodate more than 2500 Scouts during one summer.
Over the years its organization has been modified several times. Originally, each Borough39;s Scout council operated one or more Camps. The Brooklyn Council, for example, maintained four camps under the collective name "Camp Brooklyn" on Rock Lake near the southwestern end of the reservation. It is near one of these camps that the "Indian Cliffs" overlook the Delaware River. Camp Man, the Queens Council's Camp was located on Crystal Lake, near the opposite, northeastern corner.
Initially, mail from each camp was posted at the nearest Post Office, either Narrowsburg or Tusten, depending upon where the camp was located. By the mid 1930s the volume of mail had grown so large that a U.S. Post Office was located on camp property and a Postmaster was commissioned seasonally to supervise operations.
The first cancellation, a "four-bar cancel" that had to be applied by hand, can occasionally be found on the backs of postcards. It was in use from about 1934 or 1935 until 1941.
The four-bar cancel was replaced by a smaller rotary machine cancel in 1942. This remained in use until the Post Office was downgraded to a rural sub-station of the Narrowsburg Post Office, sometime around 1957.
One other imprint from the U.S. Post Office at the Ten Mile River Boy Scout Camps that can be found on postcards is a 1952 permit used on multi-view fundraising cards.
For other U.S. Seasonal Boy Scout Camp Post Offices see:
- Kanowahke Lakes, New York
- Treasure Island, New Jersey
- Owasippe, Michigan
Most of the early T.M.R. postcards were produced by the Eagle Post Card View Co. of New York. They usually printed their cards using a blue or blue-black ink, and cards from different printings can be found with different shades of color. Occasionally cards turn up that were printed in green or in black ink. A few examples are known in full color. Moreover, they would often print the same image with inscriptions indicating Camp Brooklyn, Camp Man, Camp Manhattan, and so forth. The net result is that some images can be found on quite a few different cards.
The Artvue company also published a number of views of T.M.R. All of the later chrome cards appear to have been published by Dexter press. Dexter also published a mailable folder containing view from six of its postcards as well as several Giant Postcards, such as the map card shown above.