Turn a Beloved Scout Camp into a Landfill. The Land Had Other Plans.

 

They Wanted to Turn a Beloved Scout Camp into a Landfill. The Land Had Other Plans.

Introduction: A Place of Memory

Most of us have a place like it in our memories—a summer camp, a park, a stretch of woods where we spent our childhoods. These places feel permanent, etched into the landscape of our youth. The idea that they could be bulldozed for a housing development or, worse, turned into a garbage dump, is unsettling. It feels like a violation not just of the land, but of memory itself.

For generations of young people in West Virginia, the Buckskin Scout Reservation, also known as Dilley's Mill, was exactly that kind of place. For over 60 years, its sprawling forests and central lake were a haven for outdoor education and adventure. But after the Boy Scouts of America sold the 633-acre core of the property in 2019, a shocking proposal emerged: to drain its iconic Lake Sam Hill and replace it with a sanitary landfill.

The plan seemed, to some, like a practical solution to a regional waste management crisis. But a closer look at the camp's history, its hidden geology, and the powerful ecosystem at its heart reveals that the proposal was fundamentally impossible from the start. The land, it turns out, had other plans.

1. It’s More Than Just Land—It's a Landscape of Memory

Long before it was a scout reservation, the site was known as "Dilley's Mill." The name honors Henry Dilley, a 19th-century pioneer who built a gristmill on the property, harnessing the power of Thorny Creek not just for industry, but for the "benefit of his children's children." When the Boy Scouts developed the land in the late 1950s, they didn't erase this past; they wove its generational promise into the camp's identity.

This connection to the region's heritage was deliberate. During a "Pocahontas Day" celebration on July 22, 1971, the camp dedicated new pioneer campsites named after the area's very first European settlers. Campers could stay at sites honoring figures like Jacob Marlin, for whom the nearby town of Marlinton is named. The camp itself became a living museum, transforming the landscape into a lesson in local history.

The site is also a repository of more recent, and deeply personal, memories. In its simple chapel, a bronze plaque honors the life of Cpl. Andrew R. White, a former scout from the Buckskin Council who was killed in action while serving as a Marine in Iraq in 2005. This memorial elevated the camp from a recreational facility to a place of sacred memory. To convert such a culturally significant site into a landfill would be to erase not just a place, but layers of regional history and the personal sacrifices honored there.

2. The Ground Itself Forbids It: The Hidden Danger of Karst

The most definitive reason the landfill proposal was unworkable lies not in sentiment, but in the ground itself. The entire site is located on what geologists classify as "high-risk Karst terrain," a direct result of the underlying Greenbrier Limestone formation.

Karst is a type of landscape formed when water dissolves soluble rock like limestone. Over millennia, this process creates a hidden and unstable network of sinkholes, underground caves, and fast-moving water conduits. In this kind of geology, contaminants don't seep; they race. They can "travel miles in a single day," resurfacing in springs and wells far from their source. Placing a modern landfill on this kind of foundation is extraordinarily dangerous. The immense weight could easily cause a collapse into a hidden cavity, dumping tons of toxic waste and leachate directly into a groundwater system that functions like a subterranean expressway. As the Environmental Impact Statement for the nearby Green Bank Observatory notes:

"Sinkholes and caves provide a conduit for water and contaminants into the subsurface with little opportunity for filtration"

This geological reality not only poses an immediate environmental threat but also creates an engineering challenge with a price tag that would prove insurmountable. Any leak would pose an unacceptable risk of contaminating the Greenbrier River watershed, and the very nature of the ground makes such a failure a near certainty.

3. You Can’t Just ‘Replace’ a 60-Year-Old Lake

The proposal centered on replacing the 14-acre Lake Sam Hill. But this was no simple farm pond. The lake was an artificial impoundment, created by a 35-foot-tall earthen dam built in 1958. Over more than six decades, this man-made feature has naturalized into a potent wetland ecosystem, fed by a 1.51-square-mile watershed of forested uplands.

It supports a managed warm-water fishery, stocked with bass and bluegill, and provides critical habitat for waterfowl, including wood ducks and mallards. The wetlands surrounding the lake act as a natural filter for the entire watershed. Furthermore, the dam itself is not a minor structure. State regulators classify it as a Class 2 "Significant Hazard" dam, meaning its failure would cause "appreciable economic loss, damage to infrastructure (such as Browns Creek Road), and environmental disruption."

Viewed through this lens, the proposal becomes much more radical. It wasn't just about finding a convenient basin for a landfill; it was about the active destruction of a mature, 14-acre aquatic ecosystem, the removal of a significant piece of local infrastructure, and the permanent alteration of the area's hydrology.

4. The Numbers Are Staggering (And Politically Impossible)

Even if one could ignore the site's cultural significance, its dangerous geology, and its ecological value, the project was doomed by simple economics. The cost of building a landfill at Dilley's Mill was far beyond the means of Pocahontas County.

The estimated capital expenditure to properly engineer a landfill liner system in Karst terrain, drain and prepare the lakebed, and build the necessary infrastructure would likely exceed $20 million. This staggering cost would have to be borne by the Pocahontas County Solid Waste Authority (SWA), a small agency funded by modest residential fees and serving a rural population of only about 8,000 people. The SWA's budget simply cannot support such a massive investment.

To make the project financially viable, the facility would have to become a "mega-dump"—a regional Class A landfill importing tens of thousands of tons of trash from other counties and even other states. This, however, creates an insurmountable political barrier. Under West Virginia law, opening a regional landfill that imports waste requires a county-wide referendum. The idea that voters would approve turning a beloved historical and recreational landmark into a regional garbage dump is politically impossible.

Conclusion: A Future Rooted in the Past

The proposal to turn the Buckskin Scout Reservation into a landfill was ultimately defeated not by a single, dramatic showdown, but by an overwhelming combination of fatal flaws. It was culturally incompatible, geologically unstable, ecologically destructive, and economically impossible.

The story of Dilley's Mill serves as a powerful reminder that the true value of a place is often written in layers—in its history, in the memories it holds, and in the very rock and water that define it. The future of this site lies not in waste disposal, but in the identity it has held for generations: a place of conservation, recreation, and heritage in the heart of a region known as "The Alaska of the East."

It leaves us with a question to ponder: How many other places in our own backyards are protected not just by laws, but by the silent testimony of their history and the very ground they stand on?