Shortly after his election in 1928, President Herbert C. Hoover and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, sought a weekend retreat where they could escape the demands of Washington life and find renewal in nature, and among the trees and trout streams they established their rustic summer camp at Rapidan Camp. Their first night there was May 18, 1929, when the presidential accommodations consisted of five brown army tents on wooden floors called Five Tents. Mrs. Hoover had originally called for board flooring, a roof, a boarded strip rising three or four feet from the floor, and canvas curtain sides that could be raised and lowered, but the Hoovers soon grew fond of the camp and made the tent village more permanent by replacing the canvas walls with board siding. By early August they were already using the camp for official meetings, and the retreat soon became an outdoor extension of the nation’s capital. In 1928, a dense canopy of old-growth Eastern Hemlocks shaded the area and provided the cooler temperatures the Hoovers wanted before air-conditioning, but those hemlocks were later killed by the invasive hemlock woolly adalgid. After the Hoovers left Washington, Rapidan Camp underwent many changes, including the removal of 10 of its 13 original buildings in the early 1960s, and Shenandoah National Park is working to save the remaining hemlocks and restore the Hoover-era character of the camp. The Prime Minister’s cabin now houses an exhibit, the president’s cabin is toured as part of a Ranger Program, the Brown House has been restored and refurnished to reflect the atmosphere Mrs. Hoover created for guests, and the Creel serves as housing for volunteer overseers.