14 DAY TRIAL // For 230 years, the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, has been a summer residence for royalty, presidents and the rich. But little was known about the fact that, a bit more than half a century ago, the shelter it provided also came in a different version - the nuclear one. Unwittingly, a local historian by the name of Robert Conte, who was working at the hotel in 1978, came across a door that was hiding the national top secret facility that became a myth in time.
Back in 1956, as the officials from Washington feared a nuclear attack, they commissioned the Capitol's main architect with the task of convincing Greenbrier managers to build a new wing destined to housing a nuclear bunker that would provide enough space and accommodation for over 1,000 members of the House and the Senate. The facility also contained a cafeteria, bedrooms, a TV studio, a communication center, a power plant, two adjacent conference halls with the exact number of chairs for official members, and a clinical hospital, all sealed behind a 25-ton blast door.
There was even an antenna that would have been able to detect nuclear fallout if that was the case. “The whole point was that Congress could continue to function as the legislative branch of the federal government,” shares Conte. “One of the keys to this whole operation is that the bunker was maintained at a constant rate of readiness,” he stated, adding that “It was right in front of our nose. One of the principles of the bunker was hiding in plain sight”.
All the details were revealed as a result of a Washington Post article claiming that the technology used by the government officials for nuclear shelter purposes was outdated. Now, perhaps when you rent a room in a famous hotel, you would give a second thought to the list of possible facilities it might contain.