THURMONT
Shangri-La 1947. Photo courtesy of John Kinnaird.
Historical Snippets
from Hi-Catoctin, Shangri-La and Camp David By Theresa Pryor Camp David is located sixty miles outside of Washington, D.C. in Catoctin Mountain Park. It is located east of Hagerstown and north of Frederick in the Catoctin Mountains of western Maryland, near the towns of Thurmont and Emmitsburg. Originally known as Hi-Catoctin, President Franklin D. Roosevelt named it “Shangri-La”, taken from the James Hilton novel, The Lost Horizon. Th s fantastical story is about a group of plane-crash survivors who have landed in the mythical and beautiful Shangri-La, a valley hidden deep within the 22
G AT E WAY | S U M M E R 2 0 2 1
mountains of the Himalayas and when rescued, some didn’t want to leave. Great story, by the way. Roosevelt’s idea for this once rustic wilderness retreat was to build a camp for federal employees and their families, a project completed in 1938 through the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the New Deal. On April 22, 1942, FDR selected it as States Naval installation operated by military personnel. In 1953, Camp David received its present name from President Dwight Eisenhower in honor of his father and grandson, both named David.
