Cold war shelter soon to re-open
About 70 percent of the 113,000-square-foot bunker, deep under the posh Greenbrier resort, will become a secure repository for data and documents. "It's being converted from people storage to data storage," said Linda Walls, manager of the Greenbrier's bunker tours. That means the new tours cover less ground than those that began in 1995, after the bunker was publicly exposed.
Still, there's plenty to see in a facility almost the size of two football fields stacked atop each other, including a new exhibit hall and the first public display of two dozen historic photographs. Resort guests began touring Monday; the public tours will begin Aug. 20.
The bunker, a vast box protected by five-foot-thick concrete walls and 18-to-25-ton blast doors, was built at the direction of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and completed in 1962, when the United States and the Soviet Union were bracing for nuclear war. The bunker was never used.
For 30 years, though, staff working undercover as television repairmen kept the bunker constantly ready to support 1,100 people, with food, books, magazines and board games. Rows of narrow steel bunk beds were set up.
About 70 Greenbrier employees worked there on a need-to-know basis. Signs, several of which are on display, read "Share a Ride, Not Your Secrets" and "Keep It Under Your Hat . . . The Enemy Has Ears."
There were working radio broadcast booths and a television studio with two backdrops: the U.S. Capitol framed by fall leaves and the White House rimmed in spring flowers. Two theaters with plush green seats were to serve as chambers for the House and Senate.
"This was not built to preserve individuals," Walls said. "This was built to preserve a democratic system of government."
Part of the site's appeal for Eisenhower, historians say, was that the resort and its owner, Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Co. (now CSX Corp.), had a long-standing relationship with the government. The Greenbrier once served as a 2,000-bed Army hospital and held diplomats from enemy nations after World War II.
Deep in the mountains, it was unlikely to become a target. Weather experts theorized that air-flow patterns would clear fallout quickly.
Secrecy about the bunker ended in 1992 when an article in The Washington Post Magazine argued that the shelter was no longer viable.