Greenbrier County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Greenbrier County

One hundred and twelve thousand square feet of underground reinforced-concrete bunker, designed to house the entire US Congress (all 535 members plus essential staff) and operate as a functioning legislative continuity-of-government facility for up to 60 days post-nuclear-attack — that is Project Greek Island, the Cold War congressional bunker secretly built beneath the West Virginia Wing of the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs from 1958 to 1962 under a cover story of routine resort renovation. The bunker held a dormitory, a cafeteria, a power plant, a decontamination shower complex, the House and Senate chamber replicas, a CIA-staffed communications center, and a 4-cell detention area for misbehaving members of Congress. It was maintained in 24/7 operational readiness from 1962 through May 1992, when a Washington Post exposé by Ted Gup revealed the bunker's existence and forced the federal government to decommission and partially declassify it. The Greenbrier today operates daily public bunker tours through the resort's concierge, with the original blast doors and decontamination chambers preserved largely as found.

Greenbrier County's 1,024 sq mi wrap the resort town of White Sulphur Springs (population 2,217, the site of the Greenbrier itself), Lewisburg (population 3,943, the county seat, voted 'Coolest Small Town in America' by Frommer's in 2011 and continuously cited in regional travel coverage as one of the most-preserved Appalachian 19th-century commercial street grids), the eastern Monongahela National Forest, and the Greenbrier River valley running south from Marlinton through Watoga. Watoga State Park (West Virginia's largest state park at 10,100 acres) accepts rigs to 35 ft with electric hookups across 88 sites. Greenbrier State Forest (the only WV state forest immediately adjacent to a National Forest border) accepts rigs to 35 ft on 16 first-come no-hookup sites. The Greenbrier River Trail (78 miles of converted CSX-rail-bed running south from Cass to North Caldwell) is one of the longest converted rails-to-trails routes in the US — open to hikers, bikers, and horseback riders, with shuttle services in Lewisburg supporting through-trips. Monongahela NF's Marlinton-White Sulphur Ranger District permits 14-day dispersed at signed sites with rigs to 30 ft. The Cass Scenic Railroad State Park 35 miles north operates restored Shay-geared logging locomotives on original Mower Lumber Company narrow-gauge track.