The Greenbrier

• 1. Introduction

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  The Greenbrier has been drawing visitors to the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia since 1778, when a local pioneer named Mrs. Anderson adopted a Native American practice of drinking sulphur water to relieve her chronic rheumatism. For the next 125 years, travelers called this place White Sulphur Springs, seeking the waters as refuge from coastal heat and disease. But the story of what this resort became is stranger and larger than any of that suggests. Beneath its white columns and green dome, the U.S. government quietly hollowed out a secret bunker intended to shelter all of Congress in the event of nuclear war. Twenty-eight American presidents have slept under its roof. A Confederate general wrote his only postwar political statement on its grounds. And when the whole enterprise collapsed under half a billion dollars in debt, a coal baron bought it for twenty million dollars. How does one place accumulate so much history? And who, at this moment, actually controls it?

• 2. Taking the Waters

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  Martin Van Buren and Henry Clay were among the notable early guests who made the journey to White Sulphur Springs, drawn by the same sulphur spring at the center of the property that still exists today. The spring house, with its white columns and green dome, became the enduring symbol of the place. Cottages built during those early decades still stand on the grounds. As a summer destination for those fleeing the heat of coastal cities, the resort thrived, and in 1858 a grand new hotel was built, eventually known as "The Old White."

  The Civil War nearly erased it. Control of the property passed between the Confederate Army and the Union Army, and the hotel came close to being burned to the ground. After the war, Confederate Major Cornelius Boyle reopened the resort, and it served as common ground for Southerners and Northerners alike. Confederate General Robert E. Lee, whose presence at the resort was itself a statement, authored what is described as his only postwar political paper there: the "White Sulphur Manifesto", which argued for reconciliation between the two sides. The arrival of the railroad by 1869, with direct service to the resort's gates, anchored it as the social center of the region.

• 3. Building the Greenbrier

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  In 1910, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad purchased the property, and with it came transformation. The railroad added a bath wing, which opened in 1911. The main hotel wing, a six-story, 250-room structure designed by Frederick Julius Sterner, opened in 1913. At that point, the resort dropped the name White Sulphur Springs and became the Greenbrier, taking its name from the neighboring county. The town itself had incorporated in 1909 under the old name the resort was giving up.

  Golf arrived with the railroad. The first small course opened in 1910. By 1913, a full 18-hole course designed by Charles B. Macdonald was in play; that course is still there today, known as The Old White TPC. The Old White Hotel structure was demolished in 1922 after failing to meet fire codes. A north wing, completed in 1931, crossed the original building like a "T" and nearly doubled the hotel's footprint.

  World War II sent the resort in two directions at once. First, it served as a relocation center for Axis diplomats held as enemies of the United States, beginning with German nationals and later joined by Japanese diplomats transferred from The Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia. Then the U.S. Army commandeered it as a hospital, the 2,000-bed Ashford General Hospital named for Bailey Ashford. By the time the property was sold back to the railroad in 1946-25,000 patients had been treated there.

• 4. Dorothy Draper's Reopening

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  C&O hired Dorothy Draper, an internationally renowned interior designer, to restore and redecorate the hotel after it returned from military service. Draper took control of every element of the property's design, working with bold colors, classical references, and modern touches together. The reopening in April 1948 became an international social event.

  Among those who attended were the Duke of Windsor and his wife, Wallis Simpson, who had an unusual prior connection to the place: Simpson had honeymooned at the Greenbrier with her first husband in 1916. Bing Crosby came. Members of the Kennedy family came. Over the following years, the resort hosted foreign dignitaries including Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, and Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco. High-level wartime discussions about the allocation of Allied resources had also taken place at the resort, and post-war North American talks followed in 1955. The Greenbrier Clinic, which would become independent of the hotel in 1971, had begun operating as an executive health facility that same year the hotel reopened.

• 5. Project Greek Island

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  In the late 1950s, U.S. government officials approached the Greenbrier with an unusual proposal. They wanted to build a secret underground facility beneath the resort, large enough to shelter the entire United States Congress in the event of a nuclear attack. The project was given the code name "Project Greek Island."

  Construction ran from 1959 to 1962, simultaneous with the construction of an above-ground hotel addition called the West Virginia Wing. The two projects were built together deliberately, providing cover for the underground work. The bunker was kept stocked with supplies and staffed quietly throughout the Cold War. The government never acknowledged its existence. It was never used as an emergency shelter.

  In 1992, Ted Gup of The Washington Post reported on the bunker. The government decommissioned it immediately after the story ran. Following renovations, the space was repurposed as a data storage facility operated by CSX IP for private-sector clients, and it is now open to the public for tours. The Cold War infrastructure, built to keep Congress alive after a nuclear strike, became a tourist attraction in the same mountains where Mrs. Anderson had once come to drink sulphur water for her rheumatism.

• 6. Bankruptcy and the Justice Era

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  By 2009, the resort was carrying debts of up to $500 million against assets of $100 million. It had lost $35 million in 2008 alone and laid off 650 employees, half its total workforce. Competition from other resorts and the long-term decline of rail travel, as patrons shifted to destinations reachable by car, had steadily eroded business. The hotel filed for bankruptcy.

  Jim Justice, described as a coal baron, purchased the property through his Justice Family Group for $20 million after an earlier announced sale to Marriott fell through. Marriott contested the contract but settled. Justice guaranteed all debts, which led to the bankruptcy case being dismissed. He promised to restore the resort to five-star status. When Justice was elected governor of West Virginia in 2017, his daughter took over day-to-day control.

  The financial complications did not end. The Greenbrier was used as collateral for loans from Carter Bank and Trust and a $50 million loan from JPMorgan Chase. Tax liens were placed on other Justice properties. In 2024, the hotel narrowly avoided foreclosure after JPMorgan Chase sold a loan to Beltway Capital, which declared the Greenbrier in default. In 2026, a subsidiary of TRT Holdings, the parent company of Omni Hotels and Resorts, acquired $289 million in past-due, first-lien loans tied to the property from Carter Bank and Trust. That purchase did not transfer ownership, but the TRT subsidiary subsequently filed in federal court seeking appointment of a receiver to take control. The Justice family responded with a separate lawsuit in state court. Litigation in both courts remains ongoing.

• 7. Golf, Sports, and Culture

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  Sam Snead became the head golf professional at Greenbrier in 1944, and in retirement held the title of pro emeritus. In the 21st century, that title passed to Tom Watson and then Lee Trevino. The original nine holes on the property were designed by Alexander H. Findlay. The Greenbrier hosted the 1979 Ryder Cup, notable as the first contested under the format of the United States versus Europe, the format that has continued ever since. The 1994 Solheim Cup, the women's equivalent of the Ryder Cup, was also held there.

  A casino referendum passed narrowly in 2008. A temporary Tavern Casino opened in 2009, followed by the permanent Casino Club at the Greenbrier in 2010, with simulcast horse racing and betting added in 2013. The 2016 West Virginia flood canceled the Greenbrier Classic golf tournament and damaged all four courses on the property; one modified course reopened on the 12th of July, 2016. During the COVID-19 pandemic, all matches of the 2020 World TeamTennis season were held at the resort.

  The resort's bunker and its distinctive interiors have pulled in fiction writers as well. Rex Stout's 1938 murder mystery Too Many Cooks placed his detective Nero Wolfe at the Kanawha Spa, modeled after the Greenbrier. The video game Fallout 76, set in post-nuclear West Virginia, features a location called The Whitespring Resort that closely resembles the Greenbrier's exterior, interior, and government bunker. Joy Callaway's 2022 novel The Grand Design, published by HarperCollins, fictionalizes Dorothy Draper's work on the redesign. And a novel published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 2024, In the Shadow of the Greenbrier by Emily Matchar, follows four generations of a Jewish family living near the resort across key moments in its history.