Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 8, 1993                   TAG: 9308060055
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DONNA ALVIS-BANKS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE 2ND LARGEST SCOUT CAMP IN THE WORLD

In 1949, the council purchased 400 acres on Macks Creek in Pulaski County. Buildings were constructed at the base camp and an earthen dam was built, creating a seven-acre lake for swimming. The site was called "New" Camp Powhatan.

The tract was set in the middle of a 15,000-acre spread that belonged to what was then Radford College. How the college got the land is a story in itself:

After the Civil War battle at Cloyds Mountain in Pulaski County, the victorious Federal Army pushed farther south. One company stopped for the night in that very tract of land, and one of the soldiers, a peace-time employee of a Philadelphia iron works, discovered that the rocks there were loaded with ore. After the war was over, the employee interested his firm, R.D. Wood and Sons, in the land. The company bought the tract for iron mining. By 1885, it was a thriving operation. By 1905, it was inactive.

When the last member of the original family, Walter Wood, died in 1934, he willed the land to Radford College "to be used to the best possible advantage."

The story goes that Radford College opted to sell the land to buy a concert organ for its music program. The Virginia General Assembly authorized the sale.

The Blue Ridge Mountains Council of the Boy Scouts of America put in the successful bid. For $56,100, the council acquired the 15,000-acre tract, plus two farms with 216 combined acreage. Judge Ted Dalton, who was then a Radford lawyer, was instrumental in the campaign to raise funds for the purchase.

With the new Camp Powhatan, the organization had the largest Boy Scout reservation in the world owned by a local council. The largest reservation owned by the national Boy Scout Council is Philmont Reservation (213 square miles) in New Mexico.

The Blue Ridge Scout Reservation is the site of the rugged High Knoll backpacking trail and two camps, Camp Powhatan and Camp Ottari. The latter, opened in 1962, was named for an Indian word meaning "in the middle of the forest."

The reservation operates year-round under the direction of the Blue Ridge Mountains Council.