Colorado’s Sen. Michael Bennet has a plan to honor and protect Camp Hale, the legendary former Army base near Leadville. He would make it the nation’s first National Historic Landscape, a designation that would allow for enhanced educational elements while preserving it from development and maintaining its recreational uses.
The main thing, of course, is to honor Camp Hale and the men who served there, and to recognize the pivotal role they played in Colorado history. Together, they are as much responsible as anyone for creating the Colorado we know today.
Camp Hale was constructed in 1942 to train troops in winter and mountain warfare. It is at 9,200 feet near Tennessee Pass, north of Leadville. A number of units trained there, but the first and most famous was the 10th Mountain Division. The Army recruited skiers and outdoorsmen from around the country and trained them in the kind of warfare employed by the Finnish army in the Winter War of 1939-1940 against the Soviet Union. Photos from the time show men on skis clad all in white. More than 14,000 trained there.
The 10th Mountain was deployed late in the war, with its most famous engagement occurring in Italy. In February of 1945, in what was really an exercise in armed rock climbing – at night – the men of the 10th Mountain scaled a steep formation called Riva Ridge. The division then took the highest mountain in the region, Mount Belvedere, while suffering heavy casualties.
But the 10th Mountain Division’s greatest impact on Colorado came later. Returning to civilian life, many of its veterans employed the skills they had honed to develop skiing and the entire outdoor recreation industry. Army-surplus skis and gear combined with young, fit men and a love of the sport. Vail, Aspen, Arapahoe Basin, Keystone and Steamboat are just a few of the roughly 60 ski areas founded by veterans of the 10th Mountain.
Much of what the world now envisions at the mention of Colorado can be traced directly to those men – and to Camp Hale. Bennet is right to want to see it preserved.
