By Mike Patrick
For the last 100 years, the experience of being a Boy Scout has had a positive, lasting effect on the lives of more than 110 million young people. The Boy Scouts of America provides the nation’s foremost youth program of character development and values-based leadership training, which helps young people to be, as the new Boy Scout branding states, “Prepared. For Life.”
The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) is building tomorrow’s leaders through an outdoor classroom that teaches a powerful set of real-life skills while developing fundamental qualities like leadership, character and respect. The Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve, located in Southern West Virginia near the towns of Mount Hope and Glen Jean and about 15 miles north of Beckley, will open its gates on July 15, 2013, when it becomes the official host of the National Scout Jamboree.
No Better Venue than West Virginia
Located in the New River Gorge Region of West Virginia, the Summit sits on 10,600 acres of forested mountains adjacent to more than 70,000 acres of the New River Gorge National River area that will provide a home for incredible facilities and intense outdoor programs. The summit is scheduled to open in 2013 and will complement the BSA’s three world-class national high-adventure bases in New Mexico, Minnesota and Florida. Simply put, there will be no other scouting facility in the world that will offer today’s youth a more diverse, constantly challenging and life altering experience than the summit.
The land is known locally as a hunting and fishing haven and was mined extensively during most of the 20th century. That mining history and the resulting land reclamation left a road and trail infrastructure that will result in hundreds of acres being left undisturbed as the summit is built.
The summit was made possible by funds from such charitable donors as the Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the Suzanne and Walter Scott Foundation and the T. Michael and Gillian Goodrich Foundation and from businesses like CONSOL Energy. Buildings, lakes, bridges and programming at the summit will be named in honor of the project’s donors who, through their generosity, have secured a new home for scouting for generations to come.
Building the Summit
Scouting’s journey to get to the summit has been 100 years in the making, and it’s a journey that will bring new natural wonders to our scouts long into the future. Plans for the summit began in 2007 when BSA leadership began looking for a new home for the national jamboree. Throughout the years, the National Scout Jamboree has traveled from Washington, D.C. to Idaho, Colorado, California, Pennsylvania and most recently Fort A.P. Hill, VA where the BSA forged a wonderful, mutually beneficial relationship with the U.S. Armed Forces.
After reviewing more than 80 sites in 28 states, the BSA chose the property in West Virginia in 2009 and in the process found new partners in the state and local governments and communities, the National Park Service and the West Virginia National Guard. Those relationships were not only instrumental in the selection of the West Virginia site but they continue to serve as the foundation of a public-private partnership to bring the vision of shared successes to all.
Beginning in 2013, the site will be the permanent home of the BSA’s iconic National Scout Jamboree, and the summit will also host the 2019 World Scout Jamboree. In fact, the summit will host four jamborees between 2013 and 2021. In that period, hundreds of thousands of scouts and visitors will find out what the BSA has already learned—that “Wild and Wonderful” West Virginia may be America’s best kept secret!
The BSA firmly believes it is their responsibility to do things correctly now so they can ensure good stewardship, which is why the project will be divided into several phases that will take multiple years to complete. The first phase involves preparing the site for the 2013 jamboree, and the majority of the construction at this time is horizontal. Campsites, roads, trails, an arena and activity areas are being developed that will accommodate 40,000 scouts, 8,000 volunteers and approximately 20,000 day visitors. On-site underground utilities for phase one will include water, sewer, electric and more than 350 restroom facilities in scout camping areas. During this phase, there will be limited vertical construction to include an on-site supply distribution facility as well as some limited visitor facilities. Future phases will see additional building and facility construction that will enable the site to be used year-round for a wide variety of scouting programs.
The BSA will be a permanent part of the West Virginia community with the intention of being a good neighbor. It will take several generations to grow into this property, but the BSA believes that a great plan patiently executed should be the main objective. Funding for the first phase has been made available through donors and internal resources of the BSA. This is a long-term plan and, as such, the vision will become reality as donor funding becomes available.
Service in West Virginia
The first national presence of scouts was felt this year between July 3rd and July 30th, when nearly 2,000 members of the Boy Scouts’ Order of the Arrow descended upon Central West Virginia for an extensive service project, one of the largest youth service projects performed in National Park Service history.
The project on public land at the New River Gorge National River involved building 44 miles of stacked-loop hike and bike trails, rehabilitating 46 miles of illegal ATV trails and removing the invasive multiflora rose.
Scouting has a long history of working with national parks on major trail-building projects. To enhance the work that is planned for the bike trails, the International Mountain Bicycling Association has developed a plan to cover 60 miles of trails, more than sufficiently covering the 30-plus miles of bike-trail rehabilitation planned for this project.
Each week in July, a new group of hundreds of scout volunteers arrived, each dedicating 32 hours to building and rehabilitating trails in the park. The volunteers completed a project that would have taken up to 10 years for park staff to complete. This event resulted in an estimated 80,000 hours of volunteer time valued at approximately $1 million. More importantly, it reflects scouting’s commitment to West Virginia to give first and take later.
In addition to providing direct service projects, the BSA is working with the Department of Defense to provide training opportunities for National Guard and Reserve engineering and construction units. The program is known as the Innovative Readiness Training program. National Guard units from several branches of the military will participate in a variety of construction training exercises that will enhance their ability to serve America as well as the BSA’s ability to build a world-class facility. Examples of projects the military will assist with on the summit property include road improvements and the construction of several helicopter landing areas that can be used for emergencies. Scouting could never have completed those projects on the current timeline without that assistance that reflects another win-win relationship.
Scouting’s Next 100 Years
It is the mission of the Summit Bechtel Reserve to serve the members and friends of the BSA as the new home of the National Scout Jamboree and the BSA’s newest national high-adventure base. The high-adventure base is a natural playground for outdoor adventure and activities. Whitewater rafting and kayaking, rock climbing and mountain biking have all been popular in the area for decades; those and many more action sports will be incorporated into the summit’s programs for scouts and that’s not all. The plans for the summit are as broad as the vistas seen from any of the mountaintops on the property. It has taken only a short time for scouting to fall in love with West Virginia but will take 100 years for the BSA to realize the full potential of the summit.
