Qualla: 2013 National Scout Jamboree

2013 National Scout Jamboree: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For 32 years, every National Scout Jamboree had pitched its tents on the same patch of Virginia army ground at Fort A.P. Hill. In July 2013, for the first time, 40,795 Scouts, Venturers, leaders, and staff descended instead on a brand-new piece of West Virginia mountain: the Summit Bechtel Reserve, 14,000 acres of reclaimed coal-country ridges and hollows above the New River Gorge. The 18th National Scout Jamboree was equal parts gathering and field test - a chance to prove the new venue at full scale before the 24th World Scout Jamboree arrived in 2019. Ten days, three subcamps, zero-gallon water waste, and a culture war playing out in the headliner slot.

2013 National Scout Jamboree: A New Place, a New Pattern

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Fort A.P. Hill had been hospitable but unmistakably borrowed - an Army base lent to the Scouts for ten days every four years. The Summit was the Scouts' own land, designed from the ground up around a Jamboree program. Organizers borrowed the World Jamboree model: subcamps arrange...

2013 National Scout Jamboree: The Headliner Problem

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Two of the original musical acts withdrew in the months before the event over the Boy Scouts of America's then-policy banning openly gay youth members. Carly Rae Jepsen, scheduled for the opening show, announced her withdrawal on Twitter in March 2013: as an artist who believed i...

2013 National Scout Jamboree: Zero Gallons and Other Quiet Wins

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

If the cultural argument got the headlines, the engineering got the bragging rights. The 2013 Jamboree was the first to ban all single-use water bottles - participants carried refillable canteens to filling stations across the site. Greywater from sinks and showers flushed the to...

2013 National Scout Jamboree: Scouting 2.0

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For the first time at a National Jamboree, Scouts were encouraged to bring smartphones. AT&T sponsored cell-tower and Wi-Fi coverage across the site; an Esri-powered ArcGIS app delivered personalized schedules and pathfinding. Solar chargers waited in every subcamp. Three new mer...

2013 National Scout Jamboree: What the Day Held

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On July 20, a 50-year-old volunteer from Beavercreek, Ohio - Gene Schulz, who had been counseling merit badges and reenacting the Lewis and Clark Expedition - collapsed of a heart attack near a subcamp and could not be revived at Plateau Medical Center in nearby Oak Hill. He was ...

2013 National Scout Jamboree: Aviator's Notes

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Summit Bechtel Reserve sits at 37.93 N, 81.15 W, on a reclaimed coal plateau just north of the New River Gorge in Fayette County, West Virginia. The nearest commercial airport is Raleigh County Memorial (KBKW) at Beckley, about 25 nautical miles southwest. From altitude the s...