By Adam Sulanke

Right when you drive up to the portes-cochére, the distinctive arched passageway for arriving guests at The Greenbrier, you realize how special this place is. The Greenbrier, built in 1913 within the Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia, is a year-round vacation resort that is also home to an old top secret US government bunker and a PGA golf course. The Greenbrier has 710 guest rooms, a number of residential cottages, 20 restaurants, over 55 activities, and over 33 retail options.

Interior of the Greenbrier. Photo credit: Carol Highsmith via Rawpixel.

In 2020, my parents decided to surprise my siblings and I with a Christmas trip to The Greenbrier. We left on December 5 and made the lengthy three-hour drive from Richmond through mountains and valleys, not knowing the exciting events to come. As we arrived and pulled up to the valet, I started to realize how enormous this place really was. I had never been to a hotel this size and couldn’t imagine what was inside.

This place was a different from other hotels, with an old and classy vibe, with well-preserved wall paper and aged furniture. The hotel has kept many characteristics preserved since it originally opened. The furniture feels older, and there is still the old green wallpaper and the original black and white marble flooring. They offer a wide variety of rooms: deluxe rooms, superior rooms, traditional rooms, and gable rooms. In 1948, Dorothy Draper was hired to completely renovate the interior of the building; she wanted to preserve as much as she could and keep the hotel’s classic vibe.

Photo courtesy of The Greenbrier.

During Christmas time, one activity offered for children is making your own gingerbread house. We headed downstairs and went to one of many gigantic ball rooms. My siblings and I all got to make our own house, and after this we headed straight to another room to play bingo. There are so many different rooms that it took us over 15 minutes to find where we wanted to be. The impressive thing was that all these rooms had something different: bingo, gingerbread houses, board games, movies. They have an entire Christmas season where they deck out the property and have new seasonal activities. We sat down, and they had a number of different prizes and gifts for winning bingo, including gift cards, gift certificates for the resort, and different merchandise from The Greenbrier. 

One of many restaurants on the 11,000 acre property is “Sam Snead’s Tavern,” Named after legendary golfer Sam Snead. The restaurant was empty around lunch time. It has a sports bar feel but also manages to be classy at the same time. The restaurant is in a massive building with multiple different rooms, along with games such as pool, foosball, and darts. There is a bar for adults when they put the kids to bed and a dining room for people who want more of a formal dinner.

Some other things The Greenbrier has to offer include a large indoor pool, 30 meters long and 3 meters deep. The pool has locker rooms on both ends and a pleasant lounge area on the outer edge. When the weather is warm, they also have a delightful outdoor infinity pool.

Three of the resort’s main attractions are the golf courses: “The Greenbrier,” “The Meadows,” and the PGA course “The Old White.” The Greenbrier Classic golf tournament was held here from 2010-2019. 

The entrance to the Bunker. Photo Credit: Readontheroad via Flickr.

The original attraction for The Greenbrier was the nearby natural sulfur spring, but gears have shifted ever since the Bunker was revealed. The Bunker was added to The Greenbrier in 1957 after President Dwight D. Eisenhower instructed the Department of Defense to draft an emergency plan for Congress during the Cold War. It was made to hold all 535 members of Congress and was chosen for its location. It is close to Washington but far enough to be protected from a nuclear attack. The government wanted to keep the Bunker a secret, so they told people The Greenbrier was adding “The West Virginia Wing.”

The Bunker is buried 720 feet underground, and it is a two-leveled facility of roughly 112,554 square feet. There are four doors, and the two largest ones weigh 20 and 28 tons and require 50 pounds of force to open. In the event of an attack, Congressmen would be sent to the decontamination room to be stripped, showered, and put into clean clothes. The Bunker is equipped with a hospital, operating room, and a pharmacy. The Department of Defense always kept the Bunker kept up-to-date during the Cold War; they would rotate food continually to make sure they had enough to feed 1,000 people for 60 days. They would also have to keep assigning different beds as Congress changed. They would have to make sure beds were ready, filters were changed, and all gadgets were working properly.

The Bunker remained silent and ready for action until 1992, when its existence was revealed in a Washington Post article. In 1995, the resort started to offer tours of the Bunker to guests. The resort does not allow any sort of electronics or devices that can take pictures in the Bunker. As of 2006, tours were opened to the public.