When the president of the United States wants to get away from the hectic pace in Washington, D.C., Camp David is the place to go. Camp David, in a wooded mountain area about 70 miles from Washington, D.C., is the official retreat of the president of the United States. It consists of living space for the president, the first family, and the presidential staff as well as sporting and recreational facilities.
Camp David was established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1942. He found the site particularly appealing in that its mountain air provided relief from the summer heat of Washington and its remote location offered a more relaxing environment than could be achieved in the capital city.
When Roosevelt first established the retreat, he called it Shangri-La, which evoked the blissful mountain kingdom In James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon. Later, President Dwight David Eisenhower renamed the location Camp David after his grandson David Eisenhower.
Camp David has been used for a number of significant meetings. In 1943 during World War II, President Roosevelt met there with Great Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In 1959 at the height of the Cold War, President Eisenhower met there with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev; in 1978 President Jimmy Carter sponsored peace talks between Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egypt’s President Anwar el-Sadat at the retreat at Camp David