By ED PECK
WHAT!? I joined the Army to fight the Japanese Imperial Army and you want me to strap two barrel slats on my feet and slide down a snow pile in Colorado?! I want transferred…er, Sir?
You may occasionally see a Colorado license plate with the shield of the 10th Mountain Division. They are getting rarer as the members have aged beyond driving. The World War II unit was created and based here in Colorado. The Division is a legend among Colorado skiers. Their members leave a legacy to our thriving ski industry. Vail even has bronze statues as a memorial to the 10th.
To equip soldiers to counter the German Alpine troops, our Army needed a new facility. The Army had no forces to send to Europe ready to fight using winter mountain assaults. We had never needed them before. In October 1941, the Army authorized three men: Charles Dole, Roger Langley and Roland Palmedo, to recruit rugged outdoorsmen experienced in mountaineering and cross-country skiing.
Training a whole division required a dedicated camp. The Pando Valley between Minturn and Leadville, Colorado was chosen from many other candidates nationwide. It met the same conditions that the men would face in Europe. It was above 9,000 feet, had enough snowfall (200 plus inches annually), and a granite cliff requiring technical rope ascents. It was close to a railroad for transport of men and material. The valley is relatively flat, one mile wide and three miles long.
The construction of the camp was an amazing feat. A construction crew of thousands was needed. They needed to be recruited from a limited labor pool, mostly older men above draft age or physically exempt from service. These men had to build housing for themselves before even starting work on the camp. Millions of tons of earth had to be graded, the Eagle River needed to be channeled away from the camp. A complete town was created with 226 barracks, 33 administrative buildings, an indoor gym, three movie theaters, a 676-bed hospital, three fire stations, a school, two ski areas, 100 mess halls, a bakery, five churches and chapels, a vet hospital for mules and dogs and four water tanks. Altogether it had 1,000 buildings housing 15,000 men and women. Construction was completed in just nine months with a total bill of $31 million to taxpayers.
In the four years the camp was in operation, more than 32,000 served in the 10th Mountain Division. 20,000 men engaged in combat operations in Italy suffering 5,000 causalities and 999 deaths. After the war, Camp Hale was no longer needed and the buildings were dismantled and materials recycled. All that is left today in the Pando Valley are concrete foundations and ammunition bunkers. In 2022, President Biden proclaimed the area a National Monument along with a separate area called Ten Mile Range Area. Camp Hale is open to visitors, stop on the way to Leadville soon.
Sources: Denver Public Library; Historycolorado.com; USDA.gov
