Damage from spring 2016 floods forced the closing of the Greenbrier Resort, a West Virginia classic that has hosted boldface names since the early 1800s. On July 12 it reopened, so it's worth noting that this place is not just about the presidents who've stayed there or the golf or other sports; it's also home to what was one of the greatest secrets of the Cold War.
If the Soviet Union had attacked Washington, D.C., any time between 1962 and 1992 – if the Cold War had turned into a hot war – every member of the U.S. Congress would have been whisked to the bunker at The Greenbrier resort in Sulphur Springs, WV.
This secret bomb shelter, as envisioned by Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower, would have protected Congress so it could function during a nuclear war. I recently took a tour of the bunker and it made my hair stand on end.
Fear of Fallout
I was a boy in the 1950s, a witness to frightening times. In first grade we were drilled on hiding under our little wooden desks in case of nuclear war, an exercise that even we children knew was useless. The radioactive fallout would still be there, waiting for us, and it would probably reach noncombatants, too, from Chile to Sweden to Japan, which is now having its own nuclear crisis. Newspapers and movies reminded everyone that life would never be the same after a nuclear war – assuming life could survive at all. Moreover, the odds of nuclear war breaking out were so good, if “good” is the word, that Americans were digging fallout shelters in their backyards.
With that much buzz about bomb shelters, how did the government keep this huge (the drawing, above, reveals but a tiny fraction of the underground space), publicly funded bunker secret for more than three decades? Who would have gotten to hide in the bunker at the Greenbrier – and who wouldn't? How would the country even know what wartime laws this underground Congress was passing? And, uh, how much do The Greenbrier's bunker tours cost?
How They Hid the Bunker
I'll answer the last question – $30 for adults, $15 for anyone under 18 – and the U.S. government answered the others. For starters, the historic resort already had a relationship with Washington insiders, who had played golf on its championship courses and taken the waters at the spa.
Moreover, members of Congress could get there pretty easily. Not only did The Greenbrier have an airstrip, but its owner was the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, which stopped at nearby White Sulphur Springs, WV. The government would be able to hide bills for the bunker in the military contracts it had with the railroad. Now all they had to do was build a 112,500-square-foot underground living and working facility at a busy luxury resort without anyone noticing.
The solution was for The Greenbrier to construct a new wing at the same time as the bunker was being built beneath it, so to observers, the excavation just looked like a deep foundation. This new “West Virginia” wing featured an exhibition hall; walking with a tour group down a corridor from the hotel's central building to the hall, you don't realize that part of this windowless passageway extends deep into a hill. You actually take an elevator up to the exhibition hall, and yes, the convention hall was part of the bunker. So one section of the bomb shelter was not just open to an unsuspecting public, but able to generate income. What better way to hide it?
The Real Big Bang
Of course, the bunker also had features that hotel guests never saw, and I'm not just talking about the surveillance room (right). Our group stared at multi-ton, blast-resistant doors that were once hidden behind movable walls (above). I wondered if I could swing one on its massive hinges, but as Robert S. Conte, the Greenbrier's resident historian, explains, “We used to let folks swing one of the doors—the one at the end of the long tunnel—and the big reaction came when it slammed against the concrete, making a very loud “BANG” that reverberated down the tunnel. However, we discovered that this was cracking the concrete, so now the door is held stationary.”
Too bad, but not the end of the world. Because once we really got inside the bunker, things got even more interesting -- and scary. Click here for part 2.
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