White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia: The Congressional Bunker

Tour a once-secret Cold War refuge where our elected representatives would've enjoyed their post-apocalyptic days.

Had a great tour there today March 31 2023. It appears tours are much more available and regular. Cost is $40 per person and take about 90 minutes. Because most of the facility is secure data storage, no photos are permitted and all on the tour must submit cell phones to be locked up before the tour.

The facility was never meant to take a direct atomic blast, but the secret of its location lasted for 30 years, so it was unlikely to be a target. A Washington Post writer, Ted Gup, wondered why a hotel expansion required 50,000 tons of concrete. His excuse for revealing it was that with ICBMs delivering the nukes versus planes, no one would have had time to escape anyway.

Speaking of escapes, the Greenbrier has added a bunker themed escape room experience to enhance your visit. It does not actually involve much of any of the bunker, but is still a very good escape room, with appropriate Cold War relics. It costs extra, like lots of things at the Greenbrier. Still, we give it all high marks.

30 years ago news broke of a big secret: the location of the secret bunker where all of America's Senators and U.S. Representatives would hide and survive a nuclear war. Just picture your least-favorite Senator or Representative and imagine that. It wasn't in a dirty hole in the ground, either; it was at the fancy Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia with a secret underground section. Now useless for hiding, it's open to the public for tours. See the decontamination washroom, the broadcast studio, the weapons locker, and sit in the cafeteria, designed to make the politicians uncomfortable so that they'd get back to work making laws for the surviving mutants and zombies.

Don't get your hopes up. First, they don't allow motorcycles on their property, so we had to park down the hill and take a shuttle bus up to the hotel (We were on a road trip especially to see the bunker). We did the gift shop and asked when and where the tour was. At that time, they were down to, like, one tour a day. Very disappointing. Definitely call ahead before arranging your trip around this.

The Greenbrier resort has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to the Washington Post. The posh hotel and golf course, in the hills of eastern West Virginia, has been battered by the recession and the precipitous drop in bookings at posh hotels. Our interest, naturally, is in what's under the Greenbrier, the no-longer-secret Atomic Armageddon redoubt for Washington politicians. The 1950s ear Nuclear War Bunker has been operated off and on as a tourist attraction since it was outed in the 1990s.

Marriott may end up buying the property, so we suspect (hope) the Congressional Bunker may continue in some form as a place the public can tour.