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1929: Founding

In November 1928, Herbert Hoover was overwhelmingly elected as 31st President of the United States. While all preceding Presidents came from the Eastern United States, Hoover’s origins were further from Washington, DCe had been born in Iowa, and spent much of his life in California. Returning home to routinely escape the pressure and spotlight of the presidency would not be possible, so he desired a closer casual retreat.

He and his wife had lived together at mining camps for over 10 years, and appreciated the isolation of remote accommodations. He instructed his secretary Lawrence Richey to find a secluded retreat site within 100 miles (160 km) of Washington, D.C., at least 2,500 feet (760 m) above sea level to avoid mosquitoes, andost importantlylose to an excellent trout stream for fishing.

Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover on a footbridge at camp.

Virginia Governor Harry F. Byrd was a strong supporter of plans to establish Shenandoah National Park, and persuaded Will Carson to lead the effort. Two months before Hoover’s March inauguration Carson recommended the President-elect and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, consider establishing their camp at the headwaters of the Rapidan River. The remote, undeveloped site lay on Doubletop Mountain, on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Madison County. The Mill Prong and the Laurel Prong streams join within the camp to form the Rapidan River, and all three provide excellent fishing.

Less than three weeks after Hoover’s March 4 inauguration, the Madison Eagle announced the President and his wife had selected the upper Rapidan site. Although Virginians offered to give Hoover the camp, the President used his own funds to buy the land for ,045 (at the going rate of per acre), and building materials for ,719. The Marine Corps provided construction labor as a “military exercise.” The Hoovers initially envisioned a village of tents, but soon decided on a more permanent settlement. The Marines built thirteen assorted buildings including a lodge, two mess halls, cabins and a “Town Hall.” They also created several miles of hiking trails, a stone fountain, concrete-lined trout pools, and a miniature golf course. Mrs. Hoover oversaw construction.

To reduce the Presidential budget, Hoover decommissioned the Presidential Yacht Mayflower shortly after taking office. The Filipino mess crew from the Mayflower were transferred to Rapidan Camp, along with the kitchen supplies and china.

19291933: Presidential Retreat

The First Lady’s bedroom.

At the 164 acre (66 hectare) Rapidan Camp, President Hoover enjoyed fishing in the streams, which were stocked with trout by the Interior Department. While Mrs. Hoover enjoyed riding horses at camp, Mr. Hoover did not enjoy riding horses simply to reach the camp. The state of Virginia added a one-mile extension from Rapidan Camp to a nearby road they had already planned. The road remains unpaved to this day, and occasionally challenged the presidential motorcade. The New York Times described camp as “frontier-like”. Mrs. Hoover described the drive and camp:

This camp,t the end of nowhere, with a road that in wet weather lets you sink to your hubs in slushy mush and while there bump over the most amazing bouldersas electric lights and a telephone and its morning papers. The mail is dropped from an airplane!

rs. Lou Henry Hoover

In a public speech at the celebration of “Hoover Day” in the county seat of Madison, on August 17, 1929, President Hoover spoke of fishing and his camp:

President Hoover fly fishing at Rapidan Camp.

I fear that the summer camp we have established on the Rapidan has the reputation of being devoted solely to fishing. That is not the case, for the fishing season lasts but a short time in the spring. It is a place for weekend restut fishing is an excuse and a valid reason of the widest range of usefulness for temporary retreat from our busy world.

In this case it is the excuse for return to the woods and streams with their retouch of the simpler life of the frontier from which every American springs. Fishing seems to be the sole avenue left to Presidents through which they may escape to their own thoughts and may live in their own imaginings and find relief from the pneumatic hammer of constant personal contacts, and refreshment of mind in the babble of rippling brooks.

Moreover, it is a constant reminder of the democracy of life, of humility, and of human frailtyor all men are equal before fishes. And it is desirable that the President of the United States should be periodically reminded of this fundamental facthat the forces of nature discriminate for no man.

erbert Hoover

Guests at Rapidan Camp.

The outdoor fireplace.

U.S. and foreign leaders came to the isolated and secure location of Rapidan Camp for strategy sessions with the President. His distinguished guests included inventor Thomas A. Edison and his wife, aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Supreme Court Justice H. F. Stone, Governor Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., psychologist Lillian Moller Gilbreth, businessman Edsel Ford, and British Prime MinisterRamsay MacDonald and Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill. The President and guests would head immediately for the fishing ponds after arriving at camp.

The press were rarely, if ever, invited to Rapidan Camp with the President, until his final year in office when he campaigned for a second term and “invited a massed attack by film men who were given the run of the camp.”

Hoover’s trips to camp were sometimes leisurely enough that he stopped for a roadside picnic. “Motorists paused along the highway, gaped at their President having fun.” At other times, his departure from camp to Washington was so sudden that sandwiches were dispatched from the camp kitchen to the President for consumption en-route, and Hoover was “intensely annoyed” when the press reported that his motorcade had sped at 60 miles per hour, in violation of Virginia’s speed limit of 45. Lou Henry Hoover sometimes drove her own car.

Camp Rapidan featured a large outdoor stone fireplace which was the backdrop for many photographs of the Hoovers and their guests.

At Rapidan Camp, President Hoover offered to buy Bermuda, Trinidad, and British Honduras from Prime Minister MacDonald in exchange for most of Britain’s war debt (from World War I) to the United States. But days later came the Wall Street Crash that marked the beginning of the Great Depression. In addition, Hoover and MacDonald came to an agreement that formed the basis of the 1930 London Naval Treaty while meeting at Rapidan Camp, talking for hours sitting on an “historic log”. Rapidan Camp also gave name to the “Rapidan Plan” for deploying the Girl Scouts of the USA to help alleviate the economic collapse.

Hoover’s birthday opossum and the Mountain School

A well-publicized story arose in August 1929, when a boy who lived in the nearby mountains presented President Hoover with a live opossum on his 55th birthday. Six months later, the President arranged for a new schoolhouse in the area, which had been so remote that no school existed previously. The incident resulted in a variety of legends and a great deal of apocryphal media publicity, including tales that the boy had managed to sneak past the Marine guard on duty before giving the opossum to the President as a birthday present.

The schoolhouse in 2008, after being relocated, extended with an addition, and converted to a ranger station.

However, the best understanding of historians is that the story originated weeks earlier when Admiral Joel T. Boone, Hoover’s physician, was exploring trails in the surrounding mountains and came upon an eleven-year old boy named Ray Burraker. Boone learned that Burraker and his eight brothers and sisters had never attended school. The area in which they lived, known as Dark Hollow, had no school. When the President heard of Burraker, he said “Tell that boy if he will bring me an opossum down here I’ll give him five dollars.” Boone delivered the message, but nothing happened until August 10, the President’s birthday, when Boone visited Dark Hollow again on horseback. The boy said he had caught an opossum for the President. With the inducement of riding to camp, the shy boy was persuaded to present his opossum directly to the President and his guest, Charles Lindbergh. Anne Morrow Lindbergh was amused to hear that Burraker and his friends had never heard of her famous husband.

The President raised money to build a small schoolhouse that included an apartment for Christine Vest, the teacher they hired. Vest had been trained in the special needs of education in remote mountain communities. The first year’s class of twenty-two students ranged from 6 to 20 years of age.

The story of the backwoods mountain schoolhouse was publicized nationally, resulting in donations including schoolbooks, furniture, and a piano. The President took a personal interest in the school, and welcomed its students to the White House on numerous occasions. After Hoover left office, the student body dwindled as the surrounding population was forced via a blanket condemnation law to leave the area for the establishment of Shenandoah National Park in 1935. The school building was transported to Big Meadows on Skyline Drive and used as a ranger station and residence.

Cabinet Members’ Camp

The Cabinet Members’ Camp in 1954. The staircase of the left cabin is built around a live tree.

In 1930, Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur, Attorney General William D. Mitchell, and Secretary of