Boy Scout Troop 1434, Potomac MD

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Welcome to Boy Scout Troop 1434's website!

Troop 1434 is part of the National Capital Area Council (Potomac District) and meets weekly during the school year at facilities provided by our Charter Organization, Seven Locks Baptist Church, Potomac, MD.

Visitors looking for information about a Boy Scout troop to join can start with our "Info for Visitors Looking for a Troop" link. Better still, come and meet us at one of our weekly troop meetings, Thursday evening, 7:30pm to 9:00pm during the school year, at 11845 Seven Locks Rd.

“A week of camp life is worth six months of theoretical teaching in the meeting room.” — Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of Scouting

Troop 1434 Scouts and Adults at Our Gateway Built for Summer Camp 2023, Heritage Scout Reservation, southwest Pennsylvania

Troop 1434 Scouts Gathered for a Tour of Fort Ligonier, a Colonial Fort in Western Pennsylvania

Troop at Monocacy Civil War

Scoutin in Greenland Story

Posted on Jan 10 2025 - 7:16pm

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The prominence of Greenland in the news this week brought to mind a story from the 2015 World Scout Jamboree in Japan. I was serving on the Jamboree staff. The 2019 jamboree was to be held at The Summit in West Virginia. Toward the end of the jamboree in Japan, there was a ceremony to which all heads of delegation were invited, at which the US, Canada, and Mexico jointly presented the official 2019 invitations to each national scouting organization. The “invitations“ were in the form of custom-made hiking staves with the.WOSM logo and the individual National Scouting Organizations’ logos on them, along with appropriate wording, extending the invitation. They were very cool and a unique way of passing the torch from one jamboree to the next.

On the last day of the jamboree, I ran into two Danish Scouters walking down the street, each of them with one of the staves. We struck up a conversation, and it turned out that one of the staves was for the Greenland scouting organization, which did not have any representatives in Japan, so the Danes had accepted that one on their behalf. They said they couldn’t put it into their shipping container of gear legally, since it wasn’t property of the Danish scouting organization. They offered it to me as a gift!

I had brought my own hiking staff -- you all know it as "Moses" -- to the jamboree, so I knew that it was possible to take one onto an airplane and simply have the cabin crew hold it in the coat closet in first class. We mutually figured out that there was a Greenland scouting office in Copenhagen, so the Danes were able to take the staff for the Greenland organization on a flight from the jamboree site to Tokyo, and then via SAS on to Copenhagen for presentation. So I didn’t get a unique souvenir but the Greenlanders got their invitation.

Do a good turn daily!

Changes to Merit Badge Requirements Effective January 1, 2025

Posted on Jan 1 2025 - 6:12pm

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Scouts and Counselors, please note the changes. LOTS of badges are affected. Any Scout who began work on a merit badge may continue to use the old requirements.

New Training Requirement for Adult Leaders: Hazardous Weather

Posted on Jan 1 2025 - 6:09pm

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New Training Requirement: Hazardous Weather

We Have Some Seriously Smart Scouts in Troop 1434

Posted on Jun 16 2024 - 1:39am

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On Thursday evening after the Court of Honor, I joined the Scouts in the playground outside the church. Allen gave me a most welcome tour of the latest proposed changes to what the church wants to do with the layout of the playground (his proposed Eagle Service Project), and I tested them on a Presidential history trivia question that had stumped all of the adult leaders from troops in the area at our Round Table earlier in the week: "Who is the only President to serve two non-consecutive terms?" EVERY Scout knew that it was Grover Cleveland -- several knew that he was #22 and #24 and that Benjamin Harrison was #23 between the two terms.

Really Interesting PBS Program on an Early Eagle Scout

Posted on May 23 2024 - 3:55pm

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Scouts --

For those of you who have shivered along with me as I told the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton's epic adventure of saving his crew when their ship was crushed in the ice off Antartica, here's another real-life Antarctic story. This one is the story of an Eagle Scout, Paul Siple, who first went to the South Pole with Admiral Richard Byrd in 1929, and devoted his life to exploring the Antarctic. It's a 28-minute PBS documentary, so you know it will be good. It won't be broadcast on TV in Washington, but you can stream it here any time you want a short break from studying for exams! https://www.pbs.org/video/paul-siple-boy-scout-maqe7s/

Earn the 2024 Solar Eclipse Patch!

Posted on Jan 25 2024 - 5:59pm

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There will be a solar eclipse on April 8. It will be a partial eclipse here, not total, but all Scouts are eligible to earn the Solar Eclipse patch, which would look very cool on your uniform. It's easy and straightforward to earn it. Here are the requirements: https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2024/01/24/how-to-earn-the-bsa-total-s...