Photo By Jessica Kendziorek | Members of the Air Force Reserve Command, the Air National Guard, and the active-duty Navy partnered with the Southeast Louisiana Council, Boy Scouts of America, to overhaul the aging infrastructure of the historic Salmen Scout Reservation Camp V-Bar through the Innovative Readiness Training program. Service members worked together to extend one foot in height to meet the new 100-year flood plan. (U.S. Air Force photoillustration by Jessica L. Kendziorek) see less
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Joint-Service Force overhauls Camp V-Bar infrastructure during intensive IRT Mission
Between April and July 2026, a joint-service coalition of more than 80 Department of War personnel descended on the red clay dunes of northern Hancock County for a massive civil engineering endeavor.
Through the Innovative Readiness Training program, members of the Air Force Reserve Command, the Air National Guard, and the active-duty Navy partnered with the Southeast Louisiana Council, Boy Scouts of America, to overhaul the aging infrastructure of the historic Salmen Scout Reservation Camp V-Bar.
Military and community partner leadership recently gathered on-site to review the mission’s progress, which provided critical hands-on training for troops while saving the community hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Camp V-Bar Road Repair mission was designed to push civil engineers and support personnel to their limits. Over the course of the project, DoW personnel logged over 12,000 man-hours of critical trainingand signed off 379Air Force critical training tasks.
Led by the 556th Red Horse Squadron out of Hurlburt Field, the mission integrated personnel from 12 bases and 14 squadrons, including the Pennsylvania Air National Guard’s 201st Red Horse Squadron from Pittsburgh, Montana Air National Guard’s 219th Red Horse Squadron from Great Falls, and Navy Seabees from the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 133 in Gulfport.
"This is one of the first real IRT’s that has been a true joint effort, bringing together the Air National Guard, Reserve, and active-duty Navy," said Capt. Phillip Steffen, the 556th Red Horse Squadron officer in charge. "These projects give us critical stick-time and hands-on training to help us be ready for when we deploy."
Beyond providing dirt operators and services personnel with invaluable deployment preparation in a field environment, Steffen noted that the training mission yielded substantial benefits for the community. The joint effort saved the Boy Scouts over $314,000 in labor costs and utilized more than $300,000 worth of donated limestone and rip-rap from a local material supplier.
Those donated materials were immediately put to use upgrading the camp's 50-year-old infrastructure.Originally opened in 1973 with infrastructure built by the Louisiana National Guard, the camp's roads and the Morning Glory Lake dam had severely degraded over the last five decades.
The original earthen dam posed a risk to downstream property due to a failing primary conduit.
"We had to extend the dam one foot in height because of the new 100-year flood plain," said Master Sgt. Jamaal Santiago, the 556th RHS B-Flight superintendent and Camp V-Bar, project manager. "We had to put fill material on, get it compacted correctly, and then we capped it with limestone to give it a finished product so they could safely access both sides."
In addition to raising the dam, the DoW civil engineer members replaced a failed four-foot corrugated pipe with a newly installed 10-inch permanent, self-priming siphon and successfully stabilized a massive sinkhole that had formed due to water pressure.
While securing the dam was a massive undertaking, restoring the camp's transportation network was equally vital to the reservation's operations.
The engineering teams executed an extensive plan to repair and resurface four miles of primary and utility clay gravel roads. This included completely rebuilding and limestone-capping over two miles of unconditioned, washed-out dirt roads.
"Before we got here, a lot of the roads had severe rutting and washouts, making some completely impassable," said Steffen. "The camp is required to have access for emergency services during the summer camps, and in the previous condition, they couldn't get to half of the sites."
This vital upgrade restores access for service vendors and ensures emergency response vehicles can reach previously isolated areas of the 1,400-acre camp.
"By making this happen, they're now able to get to every campsite and activity site just in case something does happen, ensuring a good response time," Steffen said.
However, these infrastructure victories were not won without a relentless fight against its biggest adversary: Mother Nature. The joint team had to overcome unprecedented weather during the IRT.
"We received over 50 inches of rain since we started, which is about 16 inches above average for this time of year, and that really hampered our efforts," said Steffen. "We would get something ready to go, and then it'd rain four or five inches, and we'd have to redo it all before we could cap it."
Two distinct 12-inch deluge events severely damaged the site, including one during the Distinguished Visitor tour.
"We got 12 inches of rain in less than 24 hours on our DV day alone," Santiago said. "It caused so much water to flow over the spillway that it pushed our rip-rap away like it was nothing and completely undermined the concrete apron."
While the team successfully reclaimed lost materials and stabilized the area, the final spillway repair will require specialized civilian engineering contracting beyond the scope of the IRT.
Despite these weather-induced setbacks, the DoW’s efforts will secure a vital community asset with deep historical roots. The Salmen Scout Reservation has a rich history dating back to 1924, inspired by an unknown scout who shared his umbrella with Fritz Salmen, a Swiss immigrant who subsequently donated the original camp land.
As the council grew, it purchased the current 1,400-acre site from the Vee Bar Ranch in 1971. The land, formerly owned by Sam R. Light, the 24-year president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, was once used to train national champion hunting dogs for President Dwight D. Eisenhower and General George Marshall.
Today, the reservation serves over 3,000 youth and nearly 900 adult volunteers annually. Utilizing the current infrastructure repairs by the heavy equipment operators, logistics experts, and service personnel of the 2026 IRT mission, the camp is postured to continue its legacy of character development and environmental stewardship for decades to come.
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