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(To learn how Congress's fallout shelter ended up at one of America's busiest, most luxurious resorts, click here.)

We hiked along that endless, featureless tunnel through the mountain to a back entrance that could accommodate large vehicles. Retracing our steps, we eased into a claustrophobic, blue-tiled decontamination center (second photo), where personal belongings of arriving Congressmen – clothes, wallets, weddings rings – would have been confiscated and burned. Next, the lawmakers, having been exposed to radioactive fallout, would have been required to shower vigorously and then wear uniforms.

Our tour group visited some of the 18 bunk-bed dormitories – quite a comedown for these VIPs – as well as the House and Senate meeting rooms, replete with broadcasting facilities so the public would know that the government was functioning. The medical clinic seemed strangely silent, as if still waiting for its first patient. Three 14,000-gallon diesel tanks, three 25,000-gallon water tanks, and a full-blown underground power plant (third photo) surprised us with their sheer size.

And then there was the oven (below): It looks somewhat like a wood-fired pizza oven, but it was not intended for pizza. Rather, this oven was for disposing of any lawmakers who might inconvenience the underground refuge by dying. The planners had thought of everything.

Keep the Bunker a Secret

Back in 1958 the construction workers had signed affidavits swearing them to secrecy, and as a local told me, the system worked. “Beyond the affidavit, they were proud that the government had picked West Virginia for a secret project, so they were not about to ruin that,” she said. “And many of them weren't especially eager to talk to outsiders anyway.” Nevertheless, rumors occasionally circulated that this was a government shelter, so The Greenbrier management had to pooh-pooh such “crazy” ideas for decades.

During the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, Greenbrier guests did notice a lot of Forsythe & Associates employees going in and out of doors in the back of the exhibition space. But why not? Forsythe, management explained, serviced the resort's audio-visual facilities.

And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. Forsythe was actually a dummy corporation consisting of technicians who maintained the food and water supplies and the electrical (etc.) systems of the bunker. Its real role – and the truth about the bunker itself – was finally exposed in 1992 by a Washington Post reporter named Ted Gup.  

The Bunker, Decommissioned

Once the public knew what and where the bunker was, of course, it was no longer a safe wartime shelter for Congress. The Greenbrier continued to rent out the exhibition hall, and it found a tenant for some of the backrooms – a transportation conglomerate that uses this deep-in-the-mountain facility to protect its electronic records from cellphone signals and other “noise.” Or so we're told. While we were in the tunnel, we had passed a few of the conglomerate's workers and the locked doors behind which they store those records. One participant whispered to me, "I'm still wondering why they confiscated our cellphones at the start of this tour."

In any case, the bunker's mission as Congress's bomb shelter has been aborted, yet questions arise: Surely the government built a shelter, somewhere, for the president and his aides, and probably one for the Supreme Court as well. Where? In this post-Cold War era, are those shelters still kept in a state of preparedness? Has the government built a new bunker somewhere for Congress? And when can we take a tour?

Who'd Be Admitted to the Bunker -- And Who Wouldn't

 Also, one old question remains: Who would have gotten to hide in the bunker at The Greenbrier – and who wouldn't? The answer is apparent when you walk through those dormitories and the communal showers. Each of the nation's 535 members of Congress could bring one staff member, but their families would have stayed behind. Imagine yourself as a senator, representative, or staffer saying goodbye to your spouse and your children, for whom unimaginable horrors might be in store, before you were relocated to an uncomfortable but safe shelter. Imagine yourself as the spouse saying goodbye, or as a child.

The bunker tour will make you mull over things like that -- make you contemplate the Cold War and the fears of those times. It may also make you wonder, in these post-Iron Curtain times, if we are any more or less afraid than we were in those dark days.

The Greenbrier, a National Historic Landmark in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and a longtime favorite resort among people who make the Who's Who list, has 682 rooms, suites, and guesthouses. It boasts three championship golf courses, indoor and outdoor tennis and swimming pools, a 40,000-square foot spa, 10 lobbies, 40 meeting rooms, a casino, innumerable restaurants and lounges, bowling alleys, and virtually every outdoor activity from mountain biking to sporting clays, whitewater rafting to falconry.