What is Camp David?

For more than 50 years now, whenever US presidents have sought privacy, they have sought the cool confines of Camp David, the presidential retreat

tucked away in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains. The lodges of Camp David are a 30-minute helicopter ride away from the White House. US presidents have entertained heads of state, conducted Cabinet

meetings and briefed Congressional leaders at the retreat. The 1978 Middle East peace talks concluded with the Camp David Accords.

It all started in 1935, when the US Work Projects Administration began

building the Catoctin Recreational Demonstration Area Project in Maryland, to show how to create parks from worn-out agricultural land. Three years later, the area opened as a camp for federal government employees and their families and was known as Hi-Catoctin. It provided a cool respite from the tropical humidity of Washington DC.

The camp was first used by ailing president FD Roosevelt to escape the heat and political pressures of the city, who renamed the camp as USS Shangri La. President Dwight Eisenhower later changed the name of the retreat to Camp David in honour of his grandson, David Eisenhower.

AP Egyptian president Anwar Sadat (left) at the Israeli Knesset in 1977. Sadat’s address to the Knesset was part of his historic three-day visit to occupied Jerusalem, the first by an Arab head of state.