West Virginia—The Greenbrier Bunker

We spent this week in Dawson, WV.  We chose this area as we wanted to tour the Greenbrier Bunker which is located nearby.

The campground we stayed it was a no-frills campground, just off the interstate. It’s part of 1000-acre cattle farm with some great views, so Brett got his “fix” getting to see the cows each day.

On Wednesday, we took a drive to short, but very curvy drive to Sandstone Falls. We had a lot of rain again this week and between that and another crazy work week, we didn’t head out again until the weekend. (Crazy work project is now done!) Saturday was another rainy day, so we opted to do some needed errands—haircuts, a little clothes shopping, grocery shopping, and a pedicure.

Sunday, we did what we came for—the Greenbrier tour.  If you’ve never heard of the Greenbrier bunker, here’s a high-level bit of the history.

In the late 1950’s, Eisenhower worried about how the government would continue in the event of a nuclear attack. He met with just the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader and the Minority Leader and it was determined a secret bunker would be built to house all 535 members of Congress. They would each bring one member of their staff, but their family members were not included in the bunker housing. The bunker was built as an addition to the existing Greenbrier hotel, a 5-star resort that catered to the elites. There were regular rooms above the bunker, and a large section of the bunker itself was used for things like trade shows and car shows and therefore was literally hidden in plain sight. Then, completely out of sight were things like a medical clinic, dorm rooms, House and Senate Chambers, and a communications center. Those areas were known to very few. It was maintained by a small crew of government employees who posed as TV repairmen. They worked for a cover company, Forsythe Associates. While they did work did do television repair for the hotel, that was only about 20% of their time. The rest of the time, they were doing things like changing the filters, keeping the pharmaceuticals up to date, and the food rotated. This went on for 30 years! 

In 1992, reporter Ted Gup disclosed the secret bunker. He was obviously tipped off by someone in the know, but how he learned of it, is still a secret. At the time it was exposed, some felt he hurt the country’s security, but in his view, the bunker was functionally obsolete. His reasoning was that it was built in a time when bombs would have been delivered by plane, so there would be hours of notice of an incoming nuclear attack and that in 1992, an attack would be delivered by missile, so there would be only minutes of notice, and therefore not enough time for the members of Congress to travel from Washington DC to the bunker in West Virginia. It’s interesting to note that when the article came out, that was the first time that most of the members of Congress learned about it. Apparently, they weren’t happy that they weren’t in the know, but I think we can all agree that had they been, it wouldn’t been able to be kept a secret for 30 years.

Here's a short, 4-minute video that gives a good overview of it: Greenbrier Bunker Tour. And if you're interested in learning more, here’s the original Washington Post article that revealed its existence: washingtonpost.com: THE ULTIMATE CONGRESSIONAL HIDEAWAY.  One thing though that the writer got wrong is that he claims in the article that the bunker would have Congress living in luxury. Being that it was built below a luxurious 5-star resort, one could understand his assumption. The reality, however, was that the bunker was quite basic with small bunkbeds in shared dormitories.

We were unable to bring anything on the tour with us, so we don’t have any photos, but the video above shows much of what we saw and is worth a watch. Here are a few photos though of the resort.

One of the entrances to the hotel.

Inside of the onsite church