Letter: Let’s not alter Camp Hale history
It appears that with the creation of the Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument, a possible next step in the process could be to alter the history of Camp Hale, as reported in the recent Vail Daily article of a restoration plan for the area. A possible plan calls for restoring the Eagle River from its 5-mile-long straight-line ditch through the camp to its original and meandering course and removing fill dirt from 340 acres of wetlands when the camp was built in the early 1940s.
But the ditch and fill environmental changes in reconstructing the valley floor for the camp are part of its history and should not be altered — for there was no such thing as a meandering river or wetlands within the confines of the operational Camp Hale. The long-lost meandering Eagle River and its wetlands of the area are more a part of the Ute history and should be told as such as it once was.
If Camp Hale is considered hallowed ground, its confines should not be changed and its history altered. That’s like wanting to repair the crack in the Liberty Bell to satisfy modern-day aspirations.
Camp Hale’s environment should be preserved as it is of land protected now as a national monument. And it is land that should not be part of a huge and costly restoration project.
The monument honors the 10th Mountain Division of the U.S. Army, but another army of earth-moving machinery altering the landscape and changing the historic Camp Hale story is not needed.
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Joe Kramarsic
Dillon
