First Lady Lou Hoover writing to former First Lady Grace Coolidge: August 31, 1930.

Hoover and Coolidge began corresponding in 1923. The correspondence began cordially; over time the friendship deepened. The pair even adopted pet names for each other. To Grace, Lou was “Bleeding Heart” and to Lou, Grace was “Lily.” Their correspondence continued until Lou’s death in 1944.

The letter is written on “The President’s Camp on the Rapidan” stationery. Herbert Hoover was the first president to use the “Rapidan Camp” in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia as a formal presidential retreat. Franklin Roosevelt would later find the location too rugged for him to navigate and, in 1942, would establish “Shangri-La,” later known as Camp David, as a retreat in the mountains of Maryland.

In the letter, Lou Hoover invites the Coolidges to come for a visit to Camp Rapidan. She says that the Hoovers “imagine you would really enjoy it, even though there is no fishing now—and altho’ we do not have the luxuries of the Brule. (Hot water “laid on” and electricity are in fact the only luxuries).” The Brule refers to Coolidge’s 1928 Summer White House on the Brule River in Wisconsin. The lodge on Cedar Island where the Coolidges stayed had been the property of Henry Clay Pierce, and Coolidge spent many an afternoon fishing its nearby lakes and rivers.