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Our View: Create the Camp Hale monument, but don’t add it to ’30 by 30′ goal

Thirty years ago, a beautiful area of the White River National Forest in Eagle County was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated as a national historic site.

Forty years prior to the dedication, construction was underway on a massive military mountain training camp there, with wetlands in the area buried and the once-meandering headwaters of the Eagle River converted into a shaft-straight irrigation ditch. The area, formerly known as Eagle Park, was named Camp Hale, and by 1945, as many as 15,000 soldiers were training there.

On April 15, 1992, the Vail Trail covered a local press conference announcing Camp Hale’s inclusion into the National Register of Historic Places.



From the Trail’s coverage: “In addition to bolstering the morale of the surviving 10 Division vets … the designation gives protection, preservation and interpretation of the site a top priority.”

If it sounds familiar, it’s because a lot of these same talking points are being used to justify the creation of a national monument at Camp Hale today, 30 years later.

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But do national monuments protect and preserve any more than national historic sites? If Camp Hale had a paved road, more interpretive displays, and it appeared in more national lands marketing, would it really be better protected?

The answer is no — probably not under these conditions. But that doesn’t mean a national monument in the area is a bad idea.

With a few of the last surviving soldiers who trained at Camp Hale still alive, the creation of a national monument there now, in 2022, represents one of the final opportunities to honor the still-living ski troopers who fought bravely in the Alps in World War II. A national monument could do just that — and more so, even, than a national historic site can. 

And if that’s all there is to it, it’s a no-brainer. Make it a national monument tomorrow while a few of these living legends are still alive.

But those in favor of the proposed Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument have other ideas on why it could be good, some of which are based on faulty logic.

One major reason given to President Biden to use the Antiquities Act to make a monument out of Camp Hale is that it could be added to the 30 by 2030 initiative, which aims to conserve at least 30 percent of America’s lands and waters by 2030. By creating a national monument at Camp Hale, supporters say it would also prevent future drilling and mining there.

But that’s based on the assumption that this location — a national historic site, on the National Register of Historic Places — will someday be laden with fracking equipment. There’s about as much chance of that happening at the Camp Hale national historic site today as the CIA returning there to train Tibetan Guerrillas, (yes, that also happened at Camp Hale once upon a time.)

If President Biden were to add to the 30 by 30 list an area that is already a national historic site on the National Register of Historic Places, this would only aid those who seek to discredit the effort as mere lip service — a phony way to claim new protection status for already protected places.

Also, we should know better than most that earning national monument status doesn’t mean the area will remain a national monument, and remain protected in perpetuity. The nearby area surrounding Mount of the Holy Cross was once a national monument, created by President Herbert Hoover in 1929. But the area lost national monument status in 1950 and shortly thereafter, Colorado businessman John Elliott sold the water rights for Homestake Creek and Cross Creek to the cities of Aurora and Colorado Springs. Today, the dam creating Homestake Reservoir, which pumps water to those cities on the other side of the Continental Divide, bears Elliot’s name.

And a final thing to remember about Camp Hale, (and perhaps this is why it would make a good place to withstand an increase in visitor presence), is while the area is “protected,” it’s not exactly pristine. Converting the area to a military camp required a burying of wetlands, the same type of sensitive areas locals say they don’t want to lose to another water diversion project. Locals have rallied against Aurora and Colorado Springs’ latest effort, the Whitney Creek reservoir, which would be located not far from Camp Hale. When we say we’ve already lost a lot of these wetlands in Eagle County, Camp Hale’s construction should be included in that accounting.

So if we’re going to honor the 10th Mountain Division by creating a national monument out of Camp Hale, let’s do it, but let’s not kid ourselves in the process. Let’s not add it to Biden’s 30 by 2030 list. Let’s not tell ourselves this area will be better protected by earning national monument status.

Let’s all admit that national monument status at Camp Hale will only make Camp Hale better celebrated, and that’s the true reason for the designation. Those ski troopers who withstood the harsh conditions there deserve as much.


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