Vision of Adventure
A lasting tribute to Scouting in West Virginia.
With our 100th Anniversary Celebration well under way, it seems only natural that we do some celebrating for a major project that will be a huge kick-start for our next 100 years—The Summit: Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve in West Virginia.
All of our hopes for this tremendous project have come true. The Summit will help bring the full Scouting experience to every youth in America. Featuring a high-adventure center and leadership-training center, it will become the permanent site of the BSA jamboree.
 Photograph by Dan Bryant |
It will be our fourth high-adventure base, rounding out our terrific roster of other locations—Philmont, Northern Tier, and the Florida Sea Base—all where, in a typical year, more than 50,000 Scouts and their leaders experience spectacular outdoor adventure.
The West Virginia site is situated in the New River Gorge region. It neighbors more than 70,000 acres of National Park Service property, providing unlimited opportunities for Scouting. It will fully complement our existing bases with whitewater rafting, mountain biking, technical rock climbing, and hiking on some of the longest trails available from a Scouting high-adventure base.
We also believe that, being close to major population centers, it will be the busiest of all our high-adventure bases. It will truly become the source of millions of memories for hundreds of thousands of Scouts and their leaders.
All of this would not have been possible without the vision and support of our generous benefactor, Stephen D. Bechtel Jr., whose donation of $50 million made this dream of ours, suddenly, become very real. He is a Distinguished Eagle Scout and a recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award. Now, the new Scouting center is named in his honor.
Our goal is to have everything up and ready by 2013. It is exciting to think of the generations of Scouts who will be crossing the New River Bridge to enter the wonders of this new base, thanks to Stephen D. Bechtel Jr.’s passion for Scouting.
Robert J. Mazzuca
Chief Scout Executive