Scouts Look to West Virginia for 2013 Jamboree

Scouts look to new site

Scouts say goodbye to Fort A.P. Hill,
turn attention to preparing West Virginia site for 2013 Jamboree

BY PORTSIA SMITH

When this year's National Scout Jamboree ended Wednesday, Scouts said goodbye to each other, and the Boy Scouts of America organization said a final goodbye to Virginia.

Now the BSA's sights are set on West Virginia.

For the past 29 years, Fort A.P. Hill in Caroline County has hosted the 10-day event. Some 45,000 Scouts and leaders from around the globe attended this year's jamboree, which celebrated the BSA's 100th anniversary.

But in 2013, the Boy Scouts plan to host the jamboree at a new reserve the organization is building in Glen Jean, W.Va.

"There's a touch of sadness that we're saying goodbye to Virginia," said BSA spokesman Bob Dreis. "A.P. Hill has been a wonderful host for the jamboree since 1981."

Dreis said the move has nothing to do with any deficiencies in Virginia or A.P. Hill, but because the BSA has an opportunity to develop its own site for multiple purposes.

The Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve will not only serve as a permanent home for the National Scout Jamboree every four years, it will be the organization's fourth high-adventure base.

Work on the new site has already begun, thanks to a $50 million contribution from the Stephen D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation. That is the largest donation ever made to the BSA, Chief Scout Executive Bob Mazucca said.

The 2013 jamboree will take up only 800 of the 10,600 acres in the Scout reserve. The BSA site, about 95 miles northwest of Blacksburg, is surrounded by about 80,000 acres of national or state parkland, according to the BSA's website.

During the jamboree, an area called "The Summit" was set up at Fort A.P. Hill so Scouts could get an idea of what the new $500 million development will look like and what types of activities it will have.

"It will be a summer camp, a training and conference center for Boy Scout leadership, as well as a museum and, of course, the fourth high-adventure," Dreis said.

High-adventure bases offer such activities as white-water rafting, rappelling, mountain biking and hiking. The West Virginia site will also host year-round training in outdoor skills and has the potential to handle World Scout Jamborees, according to the BSA website.

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin attended last Saturday's arena show to welcome the Scouts to his state in three years.

"We look forward to seeing you for the next National Scout Jamboree in 2013, when coincidentally will be the 150th anniversary of West Virginia," he told them.

Lt. Col. Jack Haefner, the commander for Fort A.P. Hill, said hosting the jamboree for nearly 30 years has been phenomenal for the Army post. The military uses the event to train its personnel in crowd control, emergency response and other activities.

"The jamboree is like any other mission we receive, we go and do it and that's it," Haefner said. "It's how we do business."

"We're anxious to do the mission and were anxious to complete the mission. This jamboree mission is completed."

While the Scouts are up and out, the jamboree is not exactly over for the Army post.

Haefner said it will take months of cleaning to get the post back to what it was before it was taken over by 45,000 Scouts. That includes about six months just to pump out the sewage lagoons, he said.

Training at A.P. Hill didn't stop, either. While the jamboree took up about 2,200 acres, the rest of the 76,000-acre post was being used for Army training.

Haefner said a new set of troops arrived this week for training before being deployed on their next mission.