Camp Hale and the Tenth Mountain Division
Near Vail, Colorado
In this high valley along the Continental Divide, the Army built Camp Hale in nineteen forty-two to train soldiers for war in the mountains. Here the famed Tenth Mountain Division learned to ski, climb, and survive in brutal alpine cold. They were the Army's first and only mountain infantry division, and they went on to help drive German forces from the ridgelines of Italy.
The story did not end with the war. Veterans of the Tenth came home and used the skills they had learned in this valley to launch America's ski and outdoor recreation industry, founding resorts like Vail just over the ridge.
Most of the wooden barracks were torn down long ago. In twenty twenty-two, President Biden designated more than fifty thousand acres here as the Camp Hale Continental Divide National Monument.
