The Indoor Rifle Range
It’s time to discuss one of the great mysteries for the modern staff member: what in the world is that thing in Craig basement? We don’t have a photo of this particular location in its heyday, so you’ll have to use your imagination. Remove the chairs and the cots and the mattresses and you have Camp Craig’s original indoor rifle range.
The range was part of the original set up for Camp Craig. The structure remaining in the back of the basement was basically an “indoor berm.” The angled metal wall would deflect the bullets into a sandtrap below after the shooter had fired through the target, which was hung off the red wooden frame. The numbers denote the positions for the shooters: 8 Scouts could fire at a time. You’ll notice on the concrete blocks on the wall there are little round brown circles–the last remains of the sound proofing, which were essentially old cardboard egg cartons. Further back on the floor are the red lines denoting where the shooters would be positioned.
The indoor range was eventually replaced by the current Dan Maddox range in the mid-1980s. Tom Willhite got the new range built as part of an unofficial, quasi-capital campaign he quietly ran to upgrade facilities at Boxwell in the early 1980s. By Craig’s opening for 1986, the outdoor range was open and has been in use ever since.
