Camp Hale: Birthplace of the 10th Mountain Division

Camp Hale recruits training by Cooper Hill

A piece of local World War history for Coloradans is Camp Hale, located between Red Cliff and Leadville. Camp Hale is best known for its role in training the 10th Mountain Division, the US's first division made up entirely of ski troops. In addition to this, Camp Hale provided much needed attention to a then-ignored Leadville, as well as being where Peter Seibert was stationed, the man who built the Vail ski village in the 1960s.

The 10th Mountain division was said to be made up of men "from college boys to cowboys", since recruitment efforts did not yield enough men who wanted to ski, which prompted the need for mountain climbers and outdoors men in general to be enlisted. The troops were trained on Cooper Hill, and taught by instructors on how to fight on skis, how to survive in the snow, and how to climb mountains, some of the instructors being from Austria.

Camp Hale today

By the middle of the war, nearly 15,000 men were stationed at Camp Hale, including 400 women from the Women's Army Corps. In addition, almost 400 members of Rommel's Afrika Corps were imprisoned there. After the war, the camp was shut down and the 10th Mountain Division moved to Texas. Today, the division has been reorganised into a light infantry division, but still bears the 'mountain' in their name. Camp Hale was mostly dismantled, but there are still some ruins of buildings there for those who want to get that much closer to Colorado's World War II history. Until next time, take care, and thank you.