Three modest frame structures that were once part of a presidential retreat that predated Camp David are tucked away at the confluence of Laurel and Mill prongs. Known as Rapidan Camp (because the Rapidan River begins with the streams' convergence), this 160-acre hideaway provided our 31st president with a temporary escape from Washington D.C.'s punishing summer heat—and, as it turned out, from the economic disaster that engulfed his presidency.
The Great Depression looms over Herbert Hoover's tenure in the White House the way 3,670-foot Fork Mountain looms over Rapidan Camp. History has judged Hoover harshly. But a kinder, gentler picture of Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover emerges here, thanks to new interpretive exhibits installed last summer.
Step inside the refurbished Prime Minister's Cabin—so named because British Prime Minister Sir Ramsey McDonald was a guest—and it's as though you just missed a living presence. A glass of orange juice is on the table, a pair of hip boots and a straw boater on the wall. A flip book on the front deck and wall displays inside the cabin detail Hoover's path to the presidency, construction plans for the camp and other aspects of the presidential couple's life.
Even before Hoover was inaugurated in March 1929, a search was on, for a suitable summer retreat for the First Couple within driving distance of Washington, D.C.
Mrs. Hoover, an enthusiastic outdoorswoman who had met her husband at Stanford where they both studied geology, was intimately involved with the camp's development. The Hoovers spent their first night at Rapidan Camp—in a tent—two months into his presidency.
It was not by any means their first experience with roughing it. In the early years of their marriage, they had traveled the world together as Hoover pursued his first career as mining engineer. The birth of their sons did not dissuade Mrs. Hoover from accompanying her husband. She simply brought the children along (by the time their eldest, Herbert Jr., celebrated his first birthday, he had been around the world twice). In the first 15 years of married life, the Hoovers lived in mining camps in 60 different countries.
Though rustic, Rapidan Camp must have been a great improvement on many of these living experiences. Architect James Y. Rippen, who designed the camp, was instructed by the First Lady to locate their residence close enough to the stream so her husband could "hear the water murmuring." The first cabins (subsequently modified) were canvas tents on wooden platforms. Fireplaces were the only source of heat. Mrs. Hoover, a thoroughgoing conservationist, stipulated that only dead trees could be cut for firewood (not a problem, since the woods were then full of dead chestnuts, victims of the blight).
Five hundred U.S. Army and Marine Corps soldiers built roads into the site, installed water and sewer systems, erected buildings and landscaped the grounds using plants that Mrs. Hoover—ahead of her time with regard to native plants—required "should not seem out of place in a woodsy setting."
Though the Hoovers paid for the land and building materials for Rapidan Camp out of their own pockets—and donated the retreat to the federal government when Hoover left office in 1932—they were roundly criticized for using military labor to construct the camp. Of the 13 buildings that once stood at Rapidan Camp, only the Brown House (the Hoovers' cabin bore this name to distinguish it from their Washington, D.C. residence), the Prime Minister's Cabin and the Creel Cabin remain. A mess hall, an office, servants' quarters and numerous cabins—those that housed less important guests were referred to as “The Slums”—were ramshackle and had to be demolished by the park service in 1962.
During his presidency, Hoover sometimes used Rapidan Camp for cabinet meetings and to entertain celebrities, among them Charles Lindbergh, and visiting heads of state. If you visit, be sure to pose your family around the big outdoor fireplace near The Brown House. It was one of Hoover's favorite spots for photo ops. His successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, picnicked once on the Brown House deck, but the paths at the camp proved too difficult for a man in a wheelchair to negotiate. If they hadn't been, Rapidan Camp might have remained the presidential retreat.
From 1948 to 1958, the Boy Scouts leased the camp. Then, during the last quarter of the 20th century, it served as a retreat for VIPs, among them president Jimmy Carter, his wife Rosalyn and daughter Amy; vice presidents Walter Mondale and Albert Gore; and now-retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor. It's only in the last few years that the Hoovers' mountain getaway has become our own.
"It has become a habit and a necessity for our government officials who have the major anxieties in National affairs, to seek some other place from which to conduct their work for prolonged periods in the summer time. But the press of public business ... is so necessary that we must face the fact that these periods must gradually be shortened. Therefore, I have thought it appropriate to accept the hospitality of your citizens and your mountains for one or two days each week and thereby combine both relief and work without cost to either."
"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 week-end rest—but fishing is an excuse and a valid reason ... for temporary retreat from our busy world ... I find that many Presidents have joined the ranks of fishermen only after their inauguration as President, although I can claim over 45 years of apprenticeship—that is, in fishing, not the Presidency.
"I have discovered the reason why Presidents take to fishing—the silent sport... Next to prayer, fishing is the most personal relationship of man ... Fishing seems to be the sole avenue left to Presidents through which they may escape to their own thoughts ... and find relief from the pneumatic hammer of constant personal contacts ... Moreover, it is a constant reminder of the democracy of life, of humanity and of human frailty—for all men are equal before fishes. And it is desirable that the President of the United States should be periodically reminded of this fundamental fact—that the forces of nature discriminate for no man."
If you plan to hike, ask for a Rapidan Camp Area Road and Trail Map when you enter the park or at a visitor center, or download a copy of the Rapidan Area map from the park web site (address below) before you begin your trip.
The hike: Park at Milam Gap Parking Area (mile 52.8), cross Skyline Drive and begin the four-mile round trip down Mill Prong Trail. (After one mile, Mill Prong Trail feeds into Mill Prong Horse Trail, which descends the rest of the way to Rapidan Camp.)
The map calls the hike "moderate," perhaps because there are a few steep places and a couple of stream crossings. For most of the wooded route, however, the slope is gentle. As you hike beside Mill Prong, you'll enjoy the same murmuring of falling water that once lulled President Hoover to sleep.
The Prime Minister's Cabin is open for selfguided tours whenever the caretaker is on the grounds, and guided tours of the Brown House are offered from mid-June through late October. The Brown House has been restored to look exactly the way it did when the Hoovers were in residence, down to the Navajo rugs on the walls and floors. (Parts of rooms for which no photographic record exists have been left unfurnished to preserve historical accuracy.)
The only building on site that is not open to the public is the Creel Cabin. Occupied in Hoover's time by his personal secretary and his physician, it is now the residence of the camp's caretaker. Allow half a day for the hike to and from the camp and to explore Rapidan Camp.
If you have a horse and trailer, you have a third alternative: ride to Rapidan Camp. Park your horse trailer in the Big Meadows area and descend to the camp via the Mill Prong Horse Trail. Horse owners should call 540/999-3500 and request the brochure on Horse Use Policies and Regulations.
For additional information, visit Shenandoah National Park's web site: nps.gov/shen.
The introduction is long overdue. Overshadowed by her successor, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mrs. Hoover was lively, intelligent, energetic and involved in public affairs. Born in 1874 in Iowa, she owes her first name to her father Charles Henry's intense desire to have a son. That she proved not to be a boy must not have bothered him long, for she took readily to the outdoors he loved. He took her camping, taught her to fish, hunt and ride horseback. A tomboy, she trapped rabbits, organized neighborhood baseball games and climbed trees.
Lou Henry had already earned a normal school teaching degree when she was inspired to enroll in Stanford University's geology department by a lecture delivered by Professor J. C. Branner. A classmate recalled Lou in her Stanford years as "slim and supple as a reed" with "a wealth of brown hair." The president, invariably attired in a high starched collar (even at Rapidan Camp), acknowledged himself captivated by her "whimsical mind, her blue eyes and a broad grinnish smile." Not long after she became the first female Stanford graduate to earn a degree in geology, the future president cabled her from Australia with a proposal of marriage. On Feb. 11, 1899, the day after their wedding, they set sail for China, where Hoover was to become the director general of the Department of Mines.
The Hoovers' stint in China coincided with the Boxer Rebellion. During that siege, Lou Hoover helped build barricades, performed guard duty and hospital volunteer work and, as "Chief Cowboy and Dairy Maid," supervised the distribution of milk to children and the wounded.
Once the Hoovers were able to leave China, they made London their home base. When World War I broke out, Mrs. Hoover threw herself into mobilizing relief efforts for American women and children stranded there. Despite the danger of torpedo attacks, she spent the war years "commuting" between London, where her husband was heading Belgian war relief, and Palo Alto, California, where their two sons were in school. During her husband's tenure as Warren Harding's secretary of commerce, she became involved with the Girl Scouts, serving in every capacity from troop leader to president of the national organization. She was also a passionate advocate of physical fitness for girls and women.
Overseeing construction of Rapidan Camp, Mrs. Hoover discovered there was no school for nearby mountain children. So the Hoovers established The President's Community School and hired a teacher to fill the gap.
As First Lady, Mrs. Hoover restored Lincoln's study for her husband's use. She dressed elegantly and was a superb hostess, though she never lost her love for the outdoors. As relief from her official duties, she rode horseback through Rock Creek Park, worked in the White House gardens and occasionally packed a picnic lunch when she drove around Washington. She was the first president's wife to drive her own car and to speak on the radio. She died in 1944 of a heart attack; her husband outlived by 20 years the woman he called "a symbol· of everything wholesome in American life."