jmu tour

The great outdoors, downtown shops and nightlife, and hundreds of restaurants help make the Shenandoah Valley, and JMU's home in it, so unique and so beautiful. Read more »

Whether you live a few minutes or a plane ride away, we have your travel needs covered! Get directions, find a hotel, and learn about the many options for getting to and from JMU during the school year. Read more »

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Student Led Tours Fall 2023 and Spring 2024

• October 13 at 12:30
• December 1 at 12:30
• February 2 at 12:30
• March 1 at 12:30
• April 26 at 12:30

Tours begin in the lobby of the Health and Behavioral Studies Building (HBS).  No registration or appointment is necessary.

*If you are registered for a campus wide  https://www.jmu.edu/admissions/visit/index.shtml   tour they are scheduled at either 10:00 or 2:00. The School of Nursing tour’s time falls in between allowing prospective students to come before or after their campus tour.

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Campus History

Walking tour, jmu campus history tour.

This digital walking tour came together in fall 2020 as a class project for HIST 696: Introduction to Public History taught by Dr. Meg Mulrooney. Created by students in the Master’s Program in History, it supports the work of the JMU Campus History Committee by mapping the experiences of Black students, faculty, staff, and community members to physical spaces and structures and grouping them by historical era. It is designed to be used while walking the campus, although that isn’t necessary. Future plans to expand the site as well as map the experiences of indigenous, Asian American, Latino/a/x, and other groups are underway. 

James Madison University Athletics

• Choose A Facility: Robert & Frances Plecker Athletic Performance Center Atlantic Union Bank Center Bank of the James Field at Veterans Memorial Park Bridgeforth Stadium/Zane Showker Field Convocation Center Eagle Field at Veterans Memorial Park East Campus Tennis Courts JMU Field Hockey Complex Golf Training Facilities Hillside Courts JMU Athletics Training Center at Sentara Park Savage Natatorium Sentara Park

Robert & Frances Plecker Athletic Performance Center

Atlantic Union Bank Center

Bank of the James Field at Veterans Memorial Park

Bridgeforth Stadium/Zane Showker Field

Convocation Center

Eagle Field at Veterans Memorial Park

East Campus Tennis Courts

JMU Field Hockey Complex

Golf Training Facilities

Hillside Courts

JMU Athletics Training Center at Sentara Park

Savage Natatorium

Sentara Park

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Program Description

The B.B.A. degree with a major in finance requires a minimum of 120 credit hours of undergraduate course work. Students enrolled at James Madison University who wish to change their major to finance should go to the Student Center in  MyMadison  to submit a request. Students must be in good academic standing to change their major to finance and, if they have taken any FIN prefix courses at the time of the change request, must meet the prerequisites for the required courses in the finance major.

Students enrolled at James Madison University who wish to change their major to finance should go to the Student Center in MyMadison to submit a request. Students must be in good academic standing to change their major to finance and, if they have taken any FIN prefix courses at the time of the change request, must meet the prerequisites for the required courses in the finance major.

Students who plan to major in finance and earn a score on the Math Placement Exam sufficient for placement into  MATH 235    are strongly encouraged to enroll in  MATH 235   .

Required major courses provide finance majors with a foundation in financial management, investments and institutions. Electives within the major permit students to obtain an additional emphasis and explore other areas within the field of finance.

Transfer Credit

Each program in the CoB will accept no more than two courses of transfer credit toward the major except in extraordinary circumstances.  The major is defined as the course work required by a major field of study in addition to the lower and upper-level BBA core courses.  For a course to be considered for acceptance in the student’s major, it must have been completed in an AACSB International-accredited business program, or a similarly accredited program, at a four-year university. 

In general, all finance course work must be completed at JMU. Transfer credit for finance courses is awarded only in certain circumstances. In no case will transfer credit be awarded for  FIN 488   . Contact the department head for more information on transfer credit.

Admission and Retention Requirements

College of business progression standards.

Any student admitted to JMU can declare any major offered by the College of Business   . However, students must make satisfactory progress in order to be formally admitted into the College of Business   . Requirements to continue pursuing a B.B.A. degree, often referred to as progression standards or formal admission, can be found on the College of Business    catalog page.

Degree and Major Requirements

1 Up to seven hours of core requirements in economics and calculus may also be taken for General Education    credit. 2  The General Education    program contains a set of requirements each student must fulfill. Some credits may be fulfilled by courses required within the major.

Major Requirements

Finance major core courses.

• FIN 360. Analytical Methods in Finance Credits: 3.00
• FIN 365. Intermediate Financial Management Credits: 3.00
• FIN 371. Principles of Investments Credits: 3.00
• FIN 488. Advanced Financial Policy Credits: 3.00

Additional Information

In addition to these core courses, the student majoring in finance must successfully complete 12 credit hours of finance elective courses. Finance electives include any 300-level or 400-level finance course other than FIN 301   , FIN 345    and the finance major core courses.

A student may choose up to one of the following courses to satisfy the finance elective credit hours: ACTG 313   , ACTG 343   , ACTG 344   , ACTG 377   , BLAW 360   ,  BLAW 470   , BLAW 480   , BLAW 494   , BLAW 495   ,  BLAW 496   , BLAW 497   , BLAW 498   , CIS 304   ,  CIS 330   , CIS 393   , CIS 463    and BSAN 393   . A finance major cannot take more than 10 credit hours of FIN prefix courses in any one semester. In addition, three credits of FIN 499 ( FIN 499A   / FIN 499B   / FIN 499C   ) will count toward the finance electives.

B.B.A. Core Component

B.b.a. lower-level core component.

B.B.A. majors must complete all of the B.B.A. core components as part of their degree program. The following courses comprise the B.B.A. Lower-Level Core Component:

• COB 191. Business Analytics I Credits: 3.00 1
• COB 202. Interpersonal Skills Credits: 3.00
• COB 204. Computer Information Systems Credits: 3.00
• COB 241. Financial Accounting Credits: 3.00
• COB 242. Managerial Accounting Credits: 3.00 4,5
• COB 291. Business Analytics II Credits: 3.00 2
• ECON 200. Introduction to Macroeconomics [C4GE] Credits: 3.00
• ECON 201. Introduction to Microeconomics Credits: 3.00
• MATH 205. Introductory Calculus I [C3QR] Credits: 3.00 3
• MATH 235. Calculus I [C3QR] Credits: 4.00 3

B.B.A. Upper-Level Core Component

The following courses comprise the B.B.A. Upper-Level Core Component:

• COB 300A. Integrative Business: Management Credits: 3.00 5,6
• COB 300B. Integrative Business: Finance Credits: 3.00 5,6
• COB 300C. Integrative Business: Operations Credits: 3.00 5,6
• COB 300D. Integrative Business: Marketing Credits: 3.00 5,6
• COB 318. Legal and Ethical Environment of Business Credits: 3.00 7
• COB 487. Strategic Management Credits: 3.00 8

1 MATH 220    may be substituted for COB 191   . 2 COB 191    or equivalent and MATH 205    or equivalent are prerequisites for  COB 291   . 3 Calculus is required but not used in calculating the B.B.A. core GPA. Students may substitute  MATH 231   ,  MATH 233    or  ISAT 151    to fulfill the calculus requirement.  MATH 235    is preferred for Economics and Finance majors. 4   COB 241    must be taken before COB 242   . 5 COB 242    is a prerequisite for COB 300 but is not used in calculating the B.B.A. core GPA. 6 All four COB 300 courses must be taken during the same semester. 7 COB 300 is a prerequisite or corequisite for COB 318   . COB 318    is a prerequisite for COB 487    and BLAW 497   . 8 COB 487    must be taken during the senior year.

Concentrations

Though not required, finance majors may elect a concentration. The concentrations are financial analysis, financial technology and analytics, and risk management. Students electing these concentrations will be taking specific electives in place of the required four electives for the major. Finance majors who wish to declare a concentration may do so once accepted into COB 300 or during any semester following. A student must earn a 2.0 in the courses designated for a concentration in order to have successfully completed the concentration.

Financial Analysis Concentration

Many James Madison University finance graduates go on to careers in financial analysis, and the need for financial analysts remains strong. The financial analysis concentration helps prepare students for these careers and also Levels I and II of the Chartered Financial Analyst exam.

Students wishing to declare and complete the financial analysis concentration must have a minimum grade of “C” in COB 241    and COB 242   .

Required Courses

• FIN 362. Financial Analysis Credits: 3.00
• FIN 378. Fixed Income Analysis Credits: 3.00
• FIN 380. Elemental and Derivative Securities Analysis Credits: 3.00

Choose one of the following: 3 Credit Hours

• ACTG 343. Corporate Financial Reporting I Credits: 3.00
• FIN 420. Financial Planning and Wealth Management Credits: 3.00
• FIN 434. Fundamentals of Financial Data Science Credits: 3.00
• FIN 455. Global Finance Credits: 3.00
• FIN 475. Financial Modeling and Risk Analysis Credits: 3.00

Total: 12 Credit Hours

Financial technology and analytics concentration.

The changing landscape of finance requires increased knowledge of technology. The financial technology and analytics concentration will prepare the students to be agile in financial information systems and expose them to various analytical and visualization tools.

• FIN 471. Portfolio Management Credits: 3.00
• BSAN 393. Data Mining for Business Analytics Credits: 3.00
• CS 149. Introduction to Programming Credits: 3.00
• CIS 304. Enterprise Architecture Credits: 3.00
• CIS 330. Database Design and Application Credits: 3.00
• CIS 393. Data Mining for Business Analytics Credits: 3.00

Risk Management Concentration

A focus in risk management is designed for finance majors pursuing a more in-depth review of the issues facing organizations and the tools needed to address those uncertainties. In the risk management concentration, students focus on the theory of risk management, risk identification, risk measurement and applications in the form of risk modeling techniques such as Value-at-Risk and Monte Carlo simulations.

• FIN 450. Financial Risk Management Credits: 3.00
• FIN 451. Risk Management II Credits: 3.00

Recommended Schedule for Majors

First two years.

Students planning to major in finance must complete the 30-31 hour, lower-division B.B.A. core curriculum prior to enrolling in upper-division core courses, normally taken in the first semester of the junior year. It is expected that the lower-division core curriculum will be completed during the first two years of study along with most of the university General Education    curriculum. Failing to complete all lower-division B.B.A. core requirements on time will delay enrollment in upper-division core and major courses.

Third and Fourth Years

Finance majors will follow the course schedule below to complete the final two years of their program. It is possible to deviate from this program, but care must be taken to ensure that all course prerequisites are met. Finance majors are encouraged to enroll in FIN 360    during the same semester as COB 300 or during the semester following completion of COB 300. Note that students taking FIN 360    concurrently with COB 300 will have more choices in finance electives in subsequent semesters because FIN 360    is a prerequisite for most finance courses. It is anticipated that students will complete the finance requirements in three semesters following COB 300.

First Semester

• COB 300A. Integrative Business: Management Credits: 3.00
• COB 300B. Integrative Business: Finance Credits: 3.00
• COB 300C. Integrative Business: Operations Credits: 3.00
• COB 300D. Integrative Business: Marketing Credits: 3.00

Second Semester

• Finance elective  Credits:   3.00

Fourth Year

COB 487    is required during a student’s senior year but may be taken either semester.

• Finance electives Credits:   6.00
• COB 487. Strategic Management Credits: 3.00

Program Total: 120 Credit Hours

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Student Voices

Introducing the reclaimed wood network.

Jack Barbour was awarded the Valley Business Keynote Entrepreneurial Scholarship, which supports local arts-based entrepreneruial projects that serve the Harrisonburg community. VBK, a group of local business leaders, annually partners with the Forbes Center for the Performing Arts ot make the award.

Barbour, an architectural design major, is investigating how natural resources, public sector work and community engagement intertwine with architectural design, focusing on how sustainable architecture helps local communities. Working in partnership with the Harrisonburg Public Works Department, he has developed the Reclaimed Wood Network, an initiative that repurposes reclaimed wood beyond rebuilding structures.

Currently, the Reclaimed Wood Network is curating exhibitions of sets made from reclaimed oak and ash wood, providing a platform for local artists to display their work. Barbour is also constructing a boat from local rescued wood, to inspire the fishing community to incorporate sustainability in public waterways.

Moments of Introspection – Nihal Koyash

Since arriving at JMU, Koyash has been an active member of the National Academic Art Fraternity, Kappa Pi, serving on the executive board for the 2023 fall semester. Through Kappa Pi, Koyash has been taken part in local exhibitions and community engagement through ArtFest, a fundraising arm of Any Given Child .

Meet Unaccompanied, JMU’s upper voices acapella group!

Abby Pond, a new member of Unaccompanied, encourages incoming students to get involved – even if the first step feels intimidating: “Joining [Unaccompanied] was the best choice I’ve made since I’ve come here, and I hope that I can encourage new students to put themselves out there and meet new people.”

In April 2023, Unaccompanied celebrated their spring concert, “Xoxo, Unac”, performing their traditional song, “Kaleidescope Heart,” with alumni. Looking forward, the team will host their 15-year reunion next spring, and continue fundraising for the Save the Music Foundation and towards a new EP.

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• Entertainment

Donnie Wahlberg Says Stepping Away from NKOTB 'Was Scary' but 'Time Apart Was Good for Us' (Exclusive)

New Kids on the Block took a 14-year break before reuniting for comeback album 'The Block' in 2008

Austin Hargrave

• The New Kids on the Block went their separate ways in 1994, with all five members pursuing individual projects
• In 2008, the band reunited and released their comeback album The Block, their first collection of new music in 14 years
• NKOTB released Still Kids on May 17, their first full studio album in 11 years

There has always been an invisible string tying the members of New Kids on the Block together.

It wove around the then-teenagers — Danny Wood , Donnie Wahlberg , Joey McIntyre and brothers Jordan and Jonathan Knight — when they first sang together in the living room of an old brick house in 1985 , and it's kept them connected as their paths diverged and intersected over the nearly 40 years since.

“We always knew that wherever we went in our lives, personally or professionally, we would always have each other,” Joey, 51, reveals to PEOPLE in the new issue , on newsstands beginning Friday. “We went through something extraordinary together, and that bonds you for life.”

Their story is one of underdog legend: five White boys from working-class Boston neighborhoods singing R&B-infused pop songs to anyone who would listen, before eventually breaking out in the late ’80s with hits like “Hangin’ Tough” and “You Got It (The Right Stuff).” They quickly became the biggest musical phenomenon in the world, selling millions of records, concert tickets and countless forms of branded merchandise — from buttons and posters to dolls and bed sheets — to their army of devoted teenage fans. 

John Nordell/Getty

“We couldn’t believe it. When we were first starting out, our dream was only to make a good song and hopefully someone would play it on the radio,” says Jonathan, 55. “Flash forward to having 50 kids in front of my house pulling grass out of my lawn.”

New Kids mania hit its zenith in 1990 as they embarked on their Magic Summer Tour , but tensions that had been quietly simmering within the band began bubbling to the surface, as they each grappled with fame, independence and growing up in the public eye.

“Things just got too big,” says Danny, 55. “We had started the band as young guys, and we were drifting apart as we were trying to find out who we were outside of the New Kids. The craziness of [fame] affected each guy differently, but I think we all felt a disconnect between the five of us.”

As their popularity and the money-making NKOTB machine grew, their lives appeared to shrink. “We were so famous that we were hiding in hotels and trying to just have a moment of peace,” says Donnie, 54. “It's hard to be a support system when you're struggling to stay afloat yourself. If we could do it all over again, I think we would turn to each other rather than away from each other.”

Craig Sjodin /Disney/Getty Images

By 1994, as record and ticket sales dropped and the musical landscape evolved, it was clear they were approaching a career crossroad. Jonathan had exited the band first, while the remaining four had to make a decision about their future. 

"We had a meeting after the Face the Music Tour in the back of the bus. I think we all would've kept going, but we just couldn't agree on what that looked like, what the next steps for the band were," says Donnie. "I said, 'If we're not going to serve the band first, we should just step away.' And then, we voted and just agreed to step away."

Although Donnie admits "it was scary and daunting" to move on from the band where they had grown up and that made them famous, the time away turned out to be a gift. It gave them the space to pursue their own interests, start families of their own and take risks without the fear of their missteps making headlines. “I can see now that the time apart was really good for us,” he says. “We needed to find our own paths, and that rejuvenated us.”

Those paths included solo music projects for Jordan and Joey (who also appeared in Broadway productions of Wicked and Waitress ), a home renovation business for Jonathan (who currently hosts HGTV's Farmhouse Fixer ) , an acting career for Donnie (who appeared in films like The Sixth Sense and now stars on CBS' Blue Bloods ) and the launch of breast cancer charity Remember Better for Danny (who named the organization after his mother, who died from the disease in 1999).  

HEIDI GUTMAN/ABC/Getty Images

Despite their breakup, the friends say they were never far from each others’ minds. 

“I remember I was filming a mini-series called The Path to 9/11 in Morocco, and I was sitting in a military helicopter with my feet dangling out the doorway. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen — it was just desert and mountains and it was spectacular — and I thought about the guys,” says Donnie. “I wished that they could share this moment with me. This is the type of thing we didn’t get to do. I got a little teary-eyed thinking about them, and I wished we could feel these kinds of highs together again. And then, we did.”

In 2008, New Kids reunited to record their first new music in 14 years with the comeback album The Block and, they say, it felt like the good old days again. “The magic came right back, that chemistry was right there. We didn’t even have to try,” says Jordan, 54. “It’s even better now because we’re bringing our different perspectives as fathers, husbands, businessmen and as people who have more experiences to share than living on a tour bus.” 

Adds Jonathan: "When we all started talking about getting back together, all of us sat down and talked through scenarios of how this is going to work, and how we were feeling about doing this all over again. That's just a sign of maturity and how much we had grown up since the last time around. We are able to talk about and share our fears now, something we never did when we were younger." 

Those strong lines of communication were evident as they recorded their newest album, Still Kids , the band's first full studio album in 11 years. Its theme is one of joy, connection and recapturing the “fun energy of being kids again,” says Danny. “Because we really do feel like that, like we’re still those young guys giving it our all.” 

Says Donnie, "When we got back together, I believed with every ounce in my being that we were going to feel [these] moments together again, that we were going to go to heights and appreciate them. It's been phenomenal, and I love that I get to experience it all with them again." 

For more about the New Kids on the Block, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.

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Boy Scouts love this scenic Va. river. Locals say they’re ruining it.

Three hours southwest of the District, the Maury River suffers as sediment flows from a dam at a reservation owned by a Scouting organization based in Bethesda.

ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY, Va. — Anne McClung was tending horses in her 19th-century barn one day last summer when she noticed a change in the Maury River flowing swiftly nearby. She’s known the river all her 76 years, but it didn’t take a practiced eye to recognize clouds of silt in the normally clear waters.

McClung could think of only one cause:

The Boy Scouts.

The National Capital Area Council of the Scouts, based in Bethesda, has maintained a campground and lake a few miles upstream from McClung’s home for almost six decades. In recent times, the Scouts have drained the lake every fall, causing sediment to pour into one of Virginia’s most iconic and well-loved rivers.

Last year, the Scouts drained the lake in August at peak season for the Maury, driving anglers, kayakers and swimmers out of the water. Resentment among local residents boiled over. Now they’ve organized an effort to fight back against what they see as mounting damage to a precious local resource. But with little legal authority and conflicting governmental mandates, the Maury River Alliance is struggling to make a difference.

“We have to do something. We can’t let it go unaddressed, unchallenged,” said alliance member George Kosovic, 73, whose family has long owned property along the river.

The situation has created an unusual standoff between local residents and an organization known for honor and stewardship, though plagued in recent years by controversy and financial trouble, leading to a decision last week to rebrand as Scouting America. The Boy Scouts have taught generations of young people how to enjoy and care for the outdoors in these mountains, but letters to local newspapers regularly cast the D.C. group as out-of-town villains.

“The Maury is a mighty river that is being held back and spoiled for generations to come and only done so to benefit one group of summer visitors,” one letter to the Lexington News-Gazette read in August. “The Scouting organization is failing citizens,” another said earlier this year.

Matthew Keck, director of support services for the National Capital Area Council of the Boy Scouts, said in an interview that the Scouts are doing everything they can to maintain their property and care for the environment.

“We’re looking to model what it is we teach young people, right?” Keck said, then recited what’s known as Scout Law: “A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. We don’t just say those words to open a meeting, we live by them. We are always trying to be good Scouts.”

The Scouts, he said, are stuck in a Catch-22: If the dam that created their lake were to fail, it could destroy the lives and property of thousands of people downstream. But maintaining it requires periodically lowering the lake, which harms the water quality of the river.

“It’s a tough thing all the way around,” said Rockbridge County administrator Spencer Suter, who has lived in the county nearly 30 years and is trying to work with both sides of the contentious issue. “From my perspective, from the county perspective, we just want the Maury to be the Maury. … [But] there’s a lot of moving parts.”

F rom just below the Goshen Scout Reservation , the Maury flows 43 miles through the mountains of Rockbridge County and the city of Lexington before emptying into the James River. It’s Virginia’s only river that starts and ends within a single county.

“Call it a spine. Call it a lifeblood flow,” Kosovic said.

Shawnee and Cherokee people lived along the waterway before European settlers made it the western frontier. Pre-Civil War, small pig-iron foundries dotted the mountains and shipped their goods on flat-bottomed bateaux along a canal that bypassed the river’s many rocky falls. Giant stone locks, abandoned when the railroad arrived, loom now like castle ruins beside the popular Ben Salem swimming hole.

The Maury tumbles out of the Allegheny Mountains through the Goshen Pass, a gap that looks like interlocking puzzle pieces and produces what the conservation group American Whitewater calls “probably the most ‘Classic’ of Virginia’s whitewater streams.”

In 1954, Virginia made the Goshen Pass Natural Area Preserve the state’s first wildlife management area. Its chestnut oak forests shelter the Appalachian jewelwing, a rare damselfly, along with bears, bobcats, water snakes and bald eagles. The state stocks the river with trout. Recently, the General Assembly named the Maury a “state scenic river.”

“That designation is a tourist attraction point, but apparently it has no teeth in terms of stopping the Scouts from doing this,” said Sam Calhoun, a retired law professor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington who owns a cottage on the Maury. “Obviously, there’s an irony there.”

Drawn to the wild beauty just three hours southwest of D.C., the National Capital Area Council of the Scouts bought some 4,000 acres in the Goshen area in 1960 and created a District-flavored outpost. The 444-acre lake, formed in 1966 by damming a Maury tributary called the Little Calfpasture, is named Lake Merriweather for Scout donor and D.C. philanthropist Marjorie Merriweather Post . One of the reservation’s five camps is named after the Bethesda-based Marriott Corp., another donor. The road that rings the reservation is Beltway Drive.

Every summer, the camps host wilderness and merit badge programs for thousands of Scouts from the council’s membership area, which includes the District, suburban Maryland, Northern Virginia, Fredericksburg and — through a council merger — the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“We have weekly programs of aquatics activities, ecology training, team building, climbing activities,” Keck said. “The lake — it is the central feature, both for program delivery and for the landscape. It’s the space between the campsites, which makes it feel more personal.”

From May through the beginning of August, about 200 Scout staffers operate the reservation. The rest of the year, only two people are there full time.

The lake is less than a mile above the spot where the Little Calfpasture and the Calfpasture converge to form the Maury. In 1985, a storm caused catastrophic floods that wiped out a section of Route 39 along the river that took a year to rebuild. But the current spate of problems dates to 1992, according to a timeline provided by the state Department of Environmental Quality.

That year, a fish kill on the short stretch of the Little Calfpasture below the lake was attributed to the Scouts releasing water through a drain at the bottom of the dam, sending a massive slug of sediment downstream. The state issued a notice of violation and required the Scouts to make changes to the dam and its management.

The Little Calfpasture was still “severely impaired” several years later, so the state ordered the Scouts to keep the lake full except during times of emergency. In 2004, the Scouts started lowering the lake again every fall; the state stepped in and told them to stop. Back and forth it went, with varying levels of compliance, until 2014, when the state decided the Little Calfpasture was gradually improving and lifted its sanctions.

Later that same year, county conservation officers began complaining that the problems had started again. But because the sanctions were lifted, the state had no authority to enforce change. Every fall, the Scouts would drain the lake and sediment would flow into the Maury. By 2023, a study by a scientist at James Madison University found that the Little Calfpasture is so choked with silt that little can live there, placing it in the bottom 15 percent of waterways statewide — worse than some urban streams.

Residents say the silt also degrades the Maury over time. John Pancake, 76, spent his whole life visiting the spot in the Goshen Pass where his home now stands. What used to be a clean stretch of boulders and water, charted by his grandmother 100 years ago, is now narrowed by earth and vegetation, with sycamores growing to the water’s edge.

The murkiness is often visible through the city of Lexington and miles beyond, residents say. But because that’s usually during the winter months, it has less direct impact on Maury life. That changed last year, when the early drawdown caught everyone off guard.

Keck said the Scouts drained the lake in August to prepare for dredging under a federal grant. But once the lake was down and mud flats exposed, the Scouts couldn’t get approval from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to dump the dredging spoils because the designated deposit area was home to an endangered bat, he said. So the mud flat sat for weeks, washing into the Maury.

Like any dammed body of water, the lake traps sediment — from fine silt to “tires or cows or trees. At some point we have to clean all of that out,” Keck said. That’s the primary reason they lower the lake every year. In addition, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), which oversees dam safety, wants the Scouts to ensure that an emergency gate at the base of the dam is operable so water can be released in a storm or flood event.

The dam is 38-feet high and mostly earthen, with a concrete channel in the center featuring 10 gates that can be opened or closed, plus the emergency gate below like the drain in a bathtub. Maintaining the emergency gate means opening it every year, which releases fine silt downstream, Keck said.

In a statement to The Washington Post, a spokesman for the DCR said the “gate tests are brief and will not lead to any significant drawdown of a reservoir.”

The state’s Department of Environmental Quality would like that gate kept closed at all times and the lake to remain full. “All the data show that if it’s kept at full pool you see much less sediment downstream. That’s best for the river. But if you have to draw it down, minimize the time and depth,” said Nesha McRae of the department’s Valley Regional Office in Harrisonburg, who has spent years working on the river.

But the state’s authority to enforce water quality is limited. Unlike the fish kill of 1992, there is no single catastrophic event to penalize. And because the sediment coming into the lake is considered “non point source,” or originating from a general environment instead of a single polluter, the best the state can do is order a “total maximum daily load” report, or a voluntary action plan to reduce overall runoff.

Such a plan went into effect in 2017. Suter, the county administrator, has been trying to help coordinate efforts to meet its goals. Federal grants have helped farmers fence grazing lands upstream on the Calfpasture, reducing runoff. Cadets from Virginia Military Institute in Lexington cleared out a ravine that had been used as an unofficial trash dump.

On the Scout reservation, though, little has changed.

“We’re at the phase where we’re trying to understand, would larger scale dredging help us to manage the silt and sediment that’s in the lake over time?” said Keck, an Eagle Scout from McLean who grew up going to camp at Goshen.

Residents say they’re frustrated and don’t understand what the Scouts have in mind. Last month, at least 150 people turned up for an informational meeting with the Maury River Alliance at a local fire station. Members had hoped state lawmakers would attend, but all had to be in Richmond for a General Assembly session. Residents vowed to keep pressure on the state to broker some kind of deal so the lake can be managed in a way that minimizes harm to the Maury and keeps locals informed.

McClung, a former librarian who has written books about Rockbridge County and the Goshen Pass, said she and others feel strongly because the river is woven into their lives. “Many children have been conceived on this river,” she said. Babies are baptized there. Weddings take place on the banks. Families scatter the ashes of loved ones.

Pancake, who retired in 2008 as the arts editor of The Post, has written about the river’s role through five generations of his family’s history. On his wall are photos from across the years — Pancake as a child in 1955 with his father in the river; at the same spot in 1980 with his daughter, Bess; and Bess in 2015 with her young daughter.

Now, as another summer approaches, Lake Merriweather is near full and the Scouts are preparing for family camping events on Memorial Day weekend. And on a recent visit to a suspended footbridge just below the confluence of the Maury, the lingering effects of lake runoff are still visible.

The Little Calfpasture on the right comes in brownish and cloudy; the Calfpasture on the left is clear; and the Maury looks like two rivers zipped together.

“People are really galvanized, more in the last six months than I’ve seen in 20 years I’ve been working on this,” said Sandra Stuart, 84, a former court reporter who trained herself to monitor the Maury’s water quality. “We like it here. We want our river.”