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Blue Ridge Summit Makes Bid to be the Summer Capital of the United States

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James Rada, Jr.

In the days before air conditioning, Washington D.C. could be nearly unbearable in the summer. Those who could would travel to summer homes in more-agreeable climates. It wasn’t always possible for federal officials, though.

In 1915, some of the towns surrounding the capital city began making their case to serve as the summer capital for the United States, in a similar way to the way President Dwight D. Eisenhower would use his Gettysburg home as a temporary White House while he was recovering from a heart attack. They were generally towns within a couple hours of Washington, D.C., and at a higher elevation.

In August, the Waynesboro Board of Trade appointed a committee to open communications with Congressman D. K. Focht “and urge him to use his influence in having the summer capital located in this section,” according to the Gettysburg Times.

W. H. Doll of the traffic department of the Western Maryland Railway traveled to Washington, D.C. and met with one of President Woodrow Wilson’s secretaries to show the railroad’s support for having Blue Ridge Summit be the summer capital.

“Mr. Doll called attention to the fact that Blue Ridge Summit is now more or less a ‘summer capital’ on account of the large number of government officials and members of the diplomatic corps who spend the heated season there,” the Gettysburg Times reported.

Diplomatic delegations from Argentina, Norway, Japan, and Uruguay already had many of their members spending the summer in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania. The Washington Post even noted in 1915 that Viscountess Chinda, the wife of Japanese Ambassador Chinda, had traveled to Japanese property in Blue Ridge Summit, calling the summer embassy. The U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Comptroller of the Currency also spent much of the summer in the mountains.

Some of the diplomats and officials had homes, but others simply stayed the summer in the Monterey Inn. The Monterey Inn was probably the most famous of the inns of Blue Ridge Summit. It was built in 1848 and attracted visitors from all over the region. The inn would burn to the ground in 1941, but in 1915, it was the jewel of Blue Ridge Summit.

For a while, it seemed that the government was considering officially designating the town as the summer capital. Engineers from Washington traveled to Blue Ridge Summit in October to take elevations and measurements of the town and surrounding area. Local officials took it as a sign that the government was collecting data on where to build government buildings.

It wasn’t the first time towns had made an appeal to be the summer capital. Earlier in the year, Braddock Heights in Frederick County had made its case only to see nothing come of it. It doesn’t seem that the town fathers made much of persuasive appeal other than offering cooler summer weather within a fairly close location to Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, Virginia Congressman Charles Carlin was making the case for the summer capital being in the Virginia mountains, not far from Washington. The basis of his appeal was that he would submit a bill for designating a summer capital, but only if it was located in his district in Virginia.

Although Blue Ridge Summit’s official recognition as the summer capital failed, the town continued to appeal to foreign delegations. Even as late as 1940, about a dozen foreign embassies maintained summer legations in Blue Ridge, many at Monterey, occasioning it to be called often “the summer capital of the United States,” according to the Living Places webpage for the Monterey Historic District.

Japanese Ambassador Chinda and wife Viscountess Chinda.

Courtesy Photo

Looking Back – 1956

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by James Rada, Jr.

Hitchhiking Marines Get a Special Ride

Marine Pfc. Harold Payne and Pfc. William Weaver were stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, but when they got a weekend pass near Christmas of 1956, they decided to head home to the Midwest. Payne was from Akron, Ohio, and Weaver was from DeWitt, Michigan.

The snag in their plan was that neither Marine had a car, so the young servicemen set out on foot, thumbing for rides as they went. Since they were wearing their uniforms, it was relatively easy for them to get rides at first.

They were about halfway along their 700-mile journey on the Friday afternoon of December 10, 1954, and the pair found themselves at Grafton Street and Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda. Despite being in uniform, no one seemed to be willing to give the Marines a ride.

They watched as a procession of dark vehicles approached along the road.

“At first when I saw these cars coming along, I thought it was a funeral procession,” Payne later told the Akron Beacon Journal.

Lucky for them, a decorated World War II Veteran was in one of the vehicles. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was a former five-star general and had been the supreme commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during the war, was on his way to Camp David with his wife, Mamie.

“The president’s car was stopped at a red light, preparing to turn onto the main highway, when Eisenhower saw the two men and ordered the motorcade to a halt,” Ohio.com reported. “He dispatched James J. Rowley, leader of the U.S. Secret Service, to ask if the Marines would like a lift.”

They quickly accepted the offer. “Eisenhower didn’t exactly scooch over on his seat or have Mamie sit on the servicemen’s laps, but he did direct them to a waiting vehicle in the motorcade,” according to Ohio.com.

The Marines rode in a car, two vehicles behind the president and one behind the first lady. “Got a good view once in a while of the back of the president’s head. Mrs. Eisenhower turned around every so often, and I could see her pretty well,” Payne told the Beacon Journal.

The president’s valet and a Navy doctor rode in the same vehicle as the Marines. They talked on the drive to Hagerstown, where the president dropped the Marines off before heading over Catoctin Mountain to Camp David.

Meanwhile, in Hagerstown, Payne and Weaver decided that if they were going to have time to spend with their families, they had better pay for some transportation.

“It got cold, and I hopped a bus to Pittsburgh and then another one home,” Payne said.

Their hitchhiking journey turned the men into folk heroes, as newspapers across the country carried the story that the president had picked up the hitchhikers. The president did something similar three years later, when he saw Airman Second-Class Jerry Beswick hitchhiking through Frederick. The president was passing through the city on his way to his farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and he gave the airman a lift to the town, where he then caught a bus to continue his journey. He had his car stop next to the airmen. Then he rolled down the window and said, “I thought we’d give you a lift.”

This wasn’t the first time that the president gave a lift to a hitchhiking serviceman. “He rarely passes them on the highway,” the Gettysburg Times reported.

Photo shows President Eisenhower in a motorcade.

Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons