Franklin D. Roosevelt, the first beneficiary of the legacy, was a sailor and a saltwater fisherman rather than a river rapids angler. Having little use for either Herbert Hoover or his trout stream, F.D.R. set up his own weekend retreat in the Maryland hills in the summer of 1942 when it was often difficult for him to get back to Hyde Park. Taking note of the wartime secrecy cloaking his movements, he dubbed the place Shangri-La after the mythical war-free land of Lost Horizon.
President Eisenhower rechristened the Maryland hideaway Camp David in honor of his grandson. Now, three Presidents later, David Eisenhower and his in-laws make good use of the place. According to "informed sources," it was at Camp David that Edward Finch Cox proposed to Tricia Nixon.
Mr. Hoover's gift, meanwhile, gathered dust in the national attic. It was so long neglected that even many White House correspondents had never heard of the place until recently, when high-ranking members of President Nixon's official family stumbled onto it. For a token fee ($2 a day, which includes linen, blankets and towels) they could pack their families off to cool, sequestered pine cabins high in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
On summer weekends, when they hike the winding trails, pitch horseshoes or gather around the stone fireplaces for martinis (the Hoovers served an orange drink), they may be haunted by the shade of the Depression President who, toward the end of his ordeal, was heard to groan, "All the money in the world could not induce me to live over the last nine months." Only in the Virginia hills, when the fish were biting and the heat of summer filtered through the leaves of oaks and maples, had he managed to snatch a few hours of peace and privacy.