Welcome to the Wheaton College Science Station! You are looking at Mt. Wheaton, which looms over our 50-acre campus. The top of Mt. Wheaton is 4600 feet above sea level. Hiking trails from campus lead to a spectacular view of Rapid Creek on the other side of the mountain.
The Wheaton College Science Station is located on a unique mountain terrace, which provides spectacular vistas in all directions.
This view across the mountain terrace, below Mt. Wheaton, shows the Boardman Dining Hall (right of center). The Twin Peaks rise in the background. The roof of the Leedy Lodge and the swimming pool are seen up slope and right of the Dining Hall.
Inspiration Point, on the north edge of campus, is a prime viewing spot for watching the summer storms which provide awesome light shows.
Rapid Creek flows through the lower property, offering opportunities to study stream ecology, sedimentology, and fly fishing!
Most of the buildings are nestled among towering ponderosa pines, which provide cool shade on hot summer days. Some of the buildings date back to the opening of the camp in the late 1940s. Others have been built more recently.
One of the newest buildings is Mixter-Leedy Lab for biological and environmental science courses. This two-story building contains laboratory classrooms, botanical and entomological collections, field study equipment, and computers with high-speed Internet access.
Students make themselves at home in these spacious biology classrooms. In each class, most mornings begin with a lecture to introduce the day's topic of study.
After spending time during the day in the field, students return to the labs to classify the plants and insects or analyze data they have collected.
These students in Introductory Field Geology are relating what they saw in the field to basic concepts that most students only read about in textbooks. They are studying in the Gen Ed Geology classroom in Wright Lab.
Higley Library is a small cabin that serves as a classroom or quiet place to study.
The Library overlooks this amphitheater, a place for class meetings, weekly worship services (Sunday evening Vespers) or campfires.
This class is having a picnic lunch. The Men’s Dorm sits in the background. It contains a bathhouse with lockers, toilets and showers. The Women’s Dorm is similarly designed.
A long, screened porch runs the length of each dorm building.
Here is what a typical room looks like: bunk beds with drawers and closets for 4-5 occupants.
Instructors live with their families in small cabins that have two bedrooms, a small kitchen, a living room and a bathroom. Students and families become very close during the summer.
Leedy Lodge is the place to hang out in the evening or during class breaks. In addition to comfy couches in front of the fireplace, the building features a soda vending machine, ping-pong tables, an electric piano and TV/DVD/VCR (TV viewing restricted to weekends).
The swimming pool next to the Lodge usually has someone floating in it.
Boardman Dining Hall is a busy place, for daily meals and late night snacking. For this particular dinner, the students are going to enjoy Ostrich meat from the local herd. You will have to come the Science Station to learn more about that!
Everywhere you look, down or up; there are reminders of God's hand in creation. We invite you to come study God's handiwork this summer in the Black Hills!