page_title: Rapidan Camp
section_title: Hoover's birthday opossum and the Mountain School
hierarchical_section_title: Rapidan Camp / 1929–1933: Presidential Retreat / Hoover's birthday opossum and the Mountain School
caption_attribution_description: English: Present-day (2008) appearance of the Mountain School, the Ranger Station located between Big Meadows Visitors Center and Big Meadows Lodge. Section under the low-pitched roof is an addition.
context_page_description: Rapidan Camp in Shenandoah National Park in Madison County, Virginia, was built by U.S. President Herbert Hoover and his wife Lou Henry Hoover, and served as their rustic retreat throughout Hoover's administration from 1929 to 1933. The first family's residential cabin was known as the "Brown House" in contrast to their more famous residence, the White House.
  Rapidan Camp was precursor of the current presidential retreat, Camp David.
context_section_description: A well-publicized story arose in August 1929, when a boy who lived in the nearby mountains presented President Hoover with a live opossum on his 55th birthday. Six months later, the President arranged for a new schoolhouse in the area, which had been so remote that no school existed previously. The incident resulted in a variety of legends and a great deal of apocryphal media publicity, including tales that the boy had managed to sneak past the Marine guard on duty before giving the opossum to the President as a birthday present.
  However, the best understanding of historians is that the story originated weeks earlier when Admiral Joel T. Boone, Hoover's physician, was exploring trails in the surrounding mountains and came upon an eleven-year-old boy named Ray Buracker. Boone learned that Buracker and his eight brothers and sisters had never attended school. The area in which they lived, known as Dark Hollow, had no school. When the President heard of Buracker, he said "Tell that boy if he will bring me an opossum down here I'll give him five dollars." Boone delivered the message, but nothing happened until August 10, the President's birthday, when Boone visited Dark Hollow again on horseback. The boy said he had caught an opossum for the President. With the inducement of riding to camp, the shy boy was persuaded to present his opossum directly to the President and his guest, Charles Lindbergh. Anne Morrow Lindbergh was amused to hear that Buracker and his friends had never heard of her famous husband.
  The President raised money to build a small schoolhouse that included an apartment for Christine Vest, the teacher they hired. Vest had been trained in the special needs of education in remote mountain communities. The first year's class of twenty-two students ranged from 6 to 20 years of age.
  The story of the backwoods mountain schoolhouse was publicized nationally, resulting in donations including schoolbooks, furniture, and a piano. The President took a personal interest in the school, and welcomed its students to the White House on numerous occasions. After Hoover left office, the student body dwindled as the surrounding population was forced via a blanket condemnation law to leave the area for the establishment of Shenandoah National Park in 1935. The school building was transported to Big Meadows on Skyline Drive and used as a ranger station and residence.
caption: The schoolhouse in 2008. It was relocated in the late 1930s to the Big Meadows Ranger Area and converted to a ranger station. The rear section with lower-pitch roof was added after the move.
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