Latest / Commentary - TJ Meadows / Taking the Waters: The Greenbrier’s Long, Storied History

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Taking the Waters: The Greenbrier’s Long, Storied History · Commentary - TJ Meadows

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  Speaker 1: Sometimes we talk so much about today that we forget
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  Speaker 1: to pause and consider the history beneath our feet. The
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  Speaker 1: Greenbrier is one of West Virginia's most remarkable stories. It
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  Speaker 1: began with the water around seventeen seventy eight. Believers claimed
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  Speaker 1: the springs could cure headaches, arthritis, and more word spread,
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  Speaker 1: drawing society's elite to the Alleghany Mountains from across the
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  Speaker 1: country and eventually the world. One observer joked the water
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  Speaker 1: cured ugliness, made sailors forget, and caused lawyers to confess
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  Speaker 1: the truth. We probably all know someone who could benefit
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  Speaker 1: from taking the waters, and a few might send us
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  Speaker 1: there too. Elegant cottages rose at White Sulfur Springs. Then
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  Speaker 1: came the grand Central Hotel known as the White four
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  Speaker 1: hundred feet long, with two hundred twenty eight rooms and
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  Speaker 1: a dining room for twelve hundred guests, But its history
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  Speaker 1: also reflected the country's darkest injustices. Enslaved people, accompanied guests,
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  Speaker 1: and labored at the resort. During the Civil War, the
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  Speaker 1: property changed hands repeatedly and narrowly escaped destruction. Rail service
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  Speaker 1: arrived in eighteen sixty nine. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway
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  Speaker 1: bought the resort in nineteen ten, opened today's central portion
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  Speaker 1: of the Greenbrier in nineteen thirteen, and ushered in a
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  Speaker 1: new era. During World War Two. The Greenbrier first held
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  Speaker 1: Axis Diplomats, then became Ashford General Hospital. After the war
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  Speaker 1: came Dorothy Draper's celebrated redesign the Greenbrier Clinic, and a
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  Speaker 1: secret Congressional bunker project Greek Island revealed decades later, President's Royalty,
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  Speaker 1: celebrities and golfers followed. Ownership changed, triumphs and disappointments accumulated,
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  Speaker 1: and that is the point. The Greenbriar's story spans centuries,
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  Speaker 1: and its future will surely bring more change. But this
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  Speaker 1: West Virginia still has a strong chance of being here
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  Speaker 1: when future generations Pauls look back and tell its story again.
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  Speaker 1: To read the full commentary, visit the website WV metronews
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  Speaker 1: dot com.