Congressional Relocation Facility Under The Greenbrier Hotel

The Ultimate Congressional Hideaway
By Ted Gup
Sunday, May 31, 1992; Page W11
The Washington Post

The year was 1960 and Randy Wickline was building something so immense and unnerving that he dared not ask what it was. All the Superior Supply Co. plant manager was told was that he was to haul concrete -- an endless river of concrete -- to be poured into the cavernous hole that had been excavated beside the posh Greenbrier hotel in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. He remembers an urgency about the job, his supervisor hollering "hurry up," even instructing him to push the legal weight limit on his truckloads, and paying the fines that resulted. To keep up with the job, Superior Supply had to purchase two more concrete mixers, and still it was stretched thin. Over the next 2 1/2 years, Wickline estimates, the company hauled some 4,000 loads to the site and poured 50,000 tons of concrete into the abyss that scrapers, rippers and air hammers had carved out of the shale. Cost was never an issue.

West tunnel.



A warren of rooms and corridors took shape where there had been a hill. The walls were two feet thick and reinforced with steel. Later, the entire structure was covered with a concrete roof and buried beneath 20 feet of dirt. At each entrance, cranes hung humongous steel doors, as if giants were to inhabit the underground structure. Soon thereafter, Wickline was told, "sensitive equipment" was moved into the facility. The door was locked. A guard was posted outside. No one had to tell Wickline that what he had helped build had something to do with the atomic bomb. "Nobody came out and said it was a bomb shelter," he says today, "but you could pretty well look and see the way they was setting it up there that they wasn't building it to keep the rain off of them.


Security control room


Unlike other government relocation centers, built mainly to house military and executive branch officials who would manage a nuclear crisis and its aftermath, the Greenbrier facility was custom-designed to meet the needs of a Congress-in-hiding, complete with a chamber for the Senate, a chamber for the House and a massive hall for joint sessions. Its discovery offers the first conclusive evidence that Congress as a whole was even included in government evacuation scenarios and given a role in postwar America. Today, the installation still stands at the ready, its operators still working under cover at the hotel -- a concrete-and-steel monument to the nuclear nightmare. The secrecy that has surrounded the site has shielded it both from public scrutiny and official reassessment, and may have allowed it to outlive the purpose for which it was conceived.

Operating room.



Situated in a lush and remote valley in the Allegheny Mountains five hours' drive southwest of Washington, the Greenbrier is one of the nation's premier resorts, a place that touts itself as a playground for foreign princes and America's political elite. Twenty-three men who were or would become U.S. presidents have stayed there. Dinners are six courses. The most elaborate are set with 24-karat-gold vermeil and served by waiters in forest green livery. A fleet of bottle-green stretch limos idles in front of the columned portico. Spread over 6,500 manicured acres, complete with golf courses, skeet shooting, spas and a stream stocked with rainbow trout, the Greenbrier wants to be seen as a resort of distinction and aristocratic carriage. It is designated a National Historic Landmark -- and seems among the last places one might expect to find a Strangelovian bunker.


coldwardc.homestead.com...

I thought this facility had been shut down some time ago...anyone know exactly?

Sincerely,
no signature

Greenbrier Tours
Our guests are invited to join in complimentary, daily guided tours of the hotel and the estate grounds. Guests also are invited to tour the former government relocation facility (bunker) built under the hotel as a top secret of the Cold War era.

The former government reloction facility had the code name "Project Greek Island," and was designed to house the members of Congress in the event of a nuclear strike on Washington.

This 112,000 sq. ft. facility has been featured on national television, radio, newspapers, various Asian television networks and BBC services throughout Europe.

Guest tours of the bunker, conducted daily, originate from the North Entrance of The Greenbrier. Tours are $25 per adult and $10 per child ages 10-18. Children under 10 are not permitted on the bunker tours. Reservations are required and may be made through the Concierge Desk, 304-536-1110, extension 7282. Length of tour is 90 minutes, comfortable shoes are recommended

I saw a sixty minutes report about a year ago, where the reporter was given a guided tour through a top secret underground installation in america.

He was not allowed to say were it was , all he could tell us is that it was west of washington.

I have been trying for a year to find out where it was .

I finally put all the peices together last night.

It was the FEMA mount weather facility .


Mount Weather
High Point Special Facility (SF)
Mount Weather Emergency Assistance Center [MWEAC]
Western Virginia Office of Controlled Conflict Operations
Berryville, VA

703-542-2287

The Mount Weather Special Facility is an unacknowledged Continuity of Government (COG) facility operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The 200,000 square foot facility also houses FEMA's National Emergency Coordinating Center. Located on a 434 acre mountain site on the borders of Loudon and Clarke counties, the above ground support facilities, with 240 employees, include about a dozen building providing communications links to the White House Situation Room.

The site was originally acquired by the National Weather Bureau to launch weather balloons and kites. In 1936 it passed to the Bureau of Mines, which bored a short experimental tunnel less than 300 feet beneath the mountain's crest to test new mining techniques. Based on a favorable evaluation of the hardness and integrity of the mountains rock, the Bureau began construction of the facility's tunnels in 1954, which were completed by the Army Corps of Engineers under the code name "Operation High Point." Total constuction costs, adjusted for inflation, are estimated to have exceeded $1 billion. Tunnel roofs are shored up with some 21,000 iron bolts driven 8 to 10 feet into the overhead rock. The entrance is protected by a guillotine gate, and a 10 foot tall by 20 foot wide 34-ton blast door that is 5 feet thick and reportedly takes 10 to 15 minutes to open or close.

Completed in 1958, the underground bunker includes a hospital, crematorium, dining and recreation areas, sleeping quarters, reservoirs of drinking and cooling water, an emergency power plant, and a radio and television studio which is part of the Emergency Braodcasting System. A series of side-tunnels accomodate a total of 20 office buildings, some of which are three stories tall. The East Tunnel includes a computer complex for directing emergency simulations and operations through the Contingency Impact Analysis System (CIAS) and the Resource Interruption Monitoring System (RIMS).



This is a huge very clear (sattelite image) 450k
www.fas.org...



www.fas.org...


[Edited on 10-1-2003 by quaneeri]

Great post and pictures quaneeri.

Thanks ORB.