Catoctin Mountain and the Potomac River. (Note that a local tradition asserts that "Catoctin" means "place of many deer" in an Indian language.) Catoctin Mountain is perhaps best known as the site of Camp David, a mountain retreat for presidents of the United States. It was first used by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, who called it "Shangri-La". In the 1950s President Dwight Eisenhower renamed it Camp David, after his grandson David Eisenhower. The resort is extremely well guarded by the United States Secret Service, and only approved guests of the President are allowed into the retreat. Due to its
Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower Western scholars has consistently held Eisenhower as one of the greatest U.S. Presidents. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Senator Robert A. Taft from Ohio were the two front-runners for the Republican Party presidential nomination going into the 1952 Republican presidential primaries. Also contending for the nomination were Governor Earl Warren of California, and former Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota. Taft led the conservative wing of the party, centered in the Midwest, that rejected many of the New Deal social welfare programs created in the 1930s, and generally held a non-interventionist foreign policy stance, believing that America should avoid alliances with foreign