Raven Rock
Lillington, NC • For military
Built near Camp David to house the military, as a backup for the Pentagon — and perhaps even the president — during an emergency, Raven Rock has retained an air of secrecy ever since construction started in 1948.
Not that it could remain completely clandestine, given the 300-person team (including miners poached from the Lincoln Tunnel dig) who carved a 3,100-foot tunnel out of granite in Raven Rock Mountain near Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.
“There were very few engineers with the expertise to hollow out a mountain and build, in essence, a free-standing city inside of it. The US government turned to the construction firm Parsons Brinckerhoff, which had developed unique tunneling expertise working on the New York City subway,” Graff told The Post.
Locals caught on and word spread to the media, who dubbed the project “Harry’s Hole,” after President Truman who greenlit the project.
Opened in 1953 and designed “to be the centerpiece of a large military emergency hub,” Raven Rock provided 100,000 feet of office space (not counting, Graff writes, “the corridors, bathrooms, dining facility, infirmary or communications and utilities areas”) that could hold about 1,400 people comfortably. Two sets of 34-ton blast doors and curved 1,000-foot-long tunnels reduce the impact of a bomb blast. The compound has undergone several rounds of upgrades — new buildings were added as well as updated technology and air-filtration systems.
By the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many government officials recommended closing Raven Rock for good. “You’d feel
like you’re walking into a dinosaur,” one said. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush ceased 24-hour operations, effectively forcing the site into standby mode.
Then 9/11 happened. By the second anniversary of the attacks, the government had injected $652 million in upgrades. The annual budget ballooned, and construction started on new buildings.
The underground city “added 27 new fuel tanks in 2012, each of which could hold 20,000 gallons,” Graff writes. Raven Rock is believed to have 900,000 square feet of office space now. Today it holds between 3,000 and 5,000 government employees — but no familiies.
“Families would have been prohibited from Raven Rock — as they would have been from effectively all of the doomsday bunkers,” writes Graff, “although in recent years as the veil of complete secrecy has lifted, family members of Raven Rock personnel are allowed to visit it for specific ceremonies. So at the very least, family members today can picture where their relatives will spend doomsday, even as they’re barred outside.”