Central Florida Council

Camp La-No-Che is the Boy Scout Camp located on the north shore of Lake Norris in Paisley, Florida. It is a part of Central Florida Council of the Boy Scouts of America and is home to Tipisa Lodge of the Order of the Arrow (OA). Camp La-No-Che is part of the Leonard and Marjorie Williams Family Scout Reservation.

La-No-Che is 1,480 acres (6.0 km²) and located near the southern border of the Ocala National Forest and on the shores of lake Norris. It is also on the north side of the Wekiva River Protection Area.

The camp is open year-round with its most active time being the 8 weeks during summer camp in June and July. La-No-Che also hosts weekends for local high school JROTC units, Venturing units, Learning for Life units, Cub Scouts (Boy Scouts of America), and Webelos (Boy Scouts of America) weekends. Tipisa Lodge also hosts OA events including sectional weekends.

There are multiple sub-camp locations on the Leonard and Marjorie Williams Family Scout Reservation including Camp Rybolt — a large group camping area, Camp Pooh Bear — a secluded and primitive camp, and Adventure Camp, which has a Project COPE course.

The camp has two waterfront areas with docks, an aquatics program, a climbing wall, two swimming pools, laundry facilities, a trading post (camp store), shotgun, rifle, and archery ranges, a health lodge, outdoor chapel, a Order of the Arrow museum, dining hall, and multiple modern latrines. Also contained on the property is a water treatment plant, 5 residential houses, sulphur springs, Pooh Bear Lake, 25 Troop campsites, 2 Staff Bunkhouses, 8 staff cabins, a baseball field, amphitheater, basketball court, bouldering wall, a dance arbor, and the Florida Trail.

The W.T. Bland Dining Hall is a full-service food facility able to produce 3 meals a day for 1000+ campers.

Adventure treks and hiking trails are numerous including Big Stump, a 12' cypress stump and an Orlando area attraction trek, Eagle Week, SCUBA diving, climbing, caving, kayaking, sailing, and trail biking. American Red Cross Health & Safety Certifications are also offered.

Central Florida Council's summer camping was originally located at Camp WeWa off of Orange Blossom Trail (US Hwy 441) in Apopka, Florida. Due to limited available land for expansion, close proximity to a highway, and a polluted lake on property, the Central Florida Council decided to seek new property around 1949. The Committee to find new land suitable for a summer camp was headed by Judge Don Cheney, an Orange County judge and long time Scouting supporter who was the first president of the Central Florida Council when it was organized in the 1920s.[2] Through various means they investigated the Gould Hunting Lodge on the north shore of Lake Norris in Lake County, FL. The hunting lodge was owned by the wealthy Gould family from Massachusetts, owners of the Gould Pump Company. The former Camp WeWa was sold to the YMCA of Central Florida, which still operates a program there under that name.

The first summer camp held on the new property was in 1950. During 1950 and 1951 there was no public electrical hook up onto the camp, although there was an electrical generator used for lights and a well-water pump. Ice blocks were brought in along with butane and propane for cooking and hot water purposes. In 1952, a 5000 Watt generator was purchased due to plans for an on-site refrigerator unit.

A few years later on the west end of the property land was purchased from the Dyke family, who was given continued access. Their house still exists today. The purchased land included the Sulfur Springs and the Big Stump nature areas, as well as a creek that feeds into Lake Norris.

The camp name was given by Judge Don Cheney and consists of "La" for Lake, "No" for Norris and "Chee" to give it an Indian sounding ending. According to Tom Burgess a professional Scouter of that era, "Cheney absolutely insisted that the name be La-No-Che... one "e", and even in the face of the fact that "La Noche" translates "the night" in Spanish...behind his back everyone understood that it was his way of putting the name of "Cheney" on the camp in perpetuity!"

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the council maintained two additional camps in northwestern Seminole County on the east and west sides of Markham Woods Road, Camp Howard and Camp Wilderness, respectively. Camp Howard was originally established in 1945, during the period of racial segregation, as a camp for black Boy Scouts in Central Florida.[3] Fully racially integrated by the early 1960s, Camp Howard contained a large lake for watersports activities and a limited number of other structures and facilities, albeit to a much lesser degree than Camp La-No-Che, while Camp Wilderness was an austere and essentially undeveloped facility for advanced scout camping by older Boy Scouts and Explorers. Given the costs of maintaining these additional facilities and the increasing value of the land for residential development, the council decommissioned both camps and sold both properties in the early 1970s. The site of Camp Howard became part of the current community of Heathrow, while the Camp Wilderness site became part of the adjacent community of Alaqua. Sales of both properties permitted the council to devote greater resources to the expansion and enhancement of Camp La-No-Che.

In the mid-1990s, the Florida-based supermarket chain, Winn-Dixie, donated a large sum of money to the Central Florida Council, and the camp was given the overall title of "Winn-Dixie Scout Reservation." In 2007, the Winn-Dixie name expired, and the Scout Reservation later sold naming rights to the Leonard and Marjorie Williams family.