In today's New York Time's Travel Section:
"THE town of White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., in the Allegheny Mountains has been a vacation spot for the powerful and the privileged since the early 1800s. And what began as an inn and scattered summer homes is now a 6,500-acre luxury resort, the Greenbrier, owned by CSX Corporation. It includes a spa, three golf courses, horseback trails, trout streams, skeet shooting, bowling, opulent shops, a culinary school, a museum and its own Amtrak station.
"But its most notable facility is far from luxurious, its grim purpose the antithesis of recreation. Built during the cold war and operated in secrecy for 30 years, it is a gargantuan underground fallout shelter, intended for use by the entire United States Congress in the event, as it was put in the movie “Dr. Strangelove,” of “nuke-u-lar combat toe to toe with the Rooskies.”
"Officially designated Project Greek Island but known colloquially as “the bunker,” it was decommissioned after its location was revealed by The Washington Post in 1992. Since its reopening this summer after a two-year renovation, it has again become a popular, if somewhat dreary, tourist attraction. The tours had been given since 1995."
http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/travel/12heads.html?ref=travel
Dave
dsktc wrote: In today's New York Time's Travel Section: "THE town of White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., in the Allegheny Mountains has been a vacation spot for the powerful and the privileged since the early 1800s. And what began as an inn and scattered summer homes is now a 6,500-acre luxury resort, the Greenbrier, owned by CSX Corporation. It includes a spa, three golf courses, horseback trails, trout streams, skeet shooting, bowling, opulent shops, a culinary school, a museum and its own Amtrak station. "But its most notable facility is far from luxurious, its grim purpose the antithesis of recreation. Built during the cold war and operated in secrecy for 30 years, it is a gargantuan underground fallout shelter, intended for use by the entire United States Congress in the event, as it was put in the movie “Dr. Strangelove,” of “nuke-u-lar combat toe to toe with the Rooskies.” "Officially designated Project Greek Island but known colloquially as “the bunker,” it was decommissioned after its location was revealed by The Washington Post in 1992. Since its reopening this summer after a two-year renovation, it has again become a popular, if somewhat dreary, tourist attraction. The tours had been given since 1995." http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/travel/12heads.html?ref=travel Dave
Please do not forget that this bunker, and others were a manifestation of the national paranoia that was fomented by the "Cold War." The bunker ar White Sulphur Springs was designed to keep the Houses of Congress functioning in the event of a nuclear attack; the bunkers under the White House and probably other ones less known in the Washington area, as well as the NORAD bunker at Cheyenne mountain in Colorado all were refuges for a continuity of Federal presence.Certainly, the number of private shelters in residentail backyards, and under public buildings that were designated public shelters, provisioned and provided in the event of nuclear attack. All products of the paranoia of a time fading into memory, but fears that were very real and on the minds of American at the time. These concrete reminders and our veterans are presences that we are still vunerable.
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