Rocky Mountain Arsenal: From Chemical Weapons to Wildlife Refuge

The land you're passing near has one of the more remarkable transformation stories in American environmental history. Starting in nineteen forty-two, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal produced some of the most toxic materials ever made on American soil, including mustard gas, lewisite, and nerve agent GB, as well as napalm and pesticides. For decades the site was one of the most contaminated places in the United States.

Then came the cleanup. Beginning in the nineteen eighties and continuing into the two thousand tens, the Army and its corporate partners spent roughly two billion dollars removing or containing contamination across the site. The result is a National Wildlife Refuge of about fifteen thousand acres, home to bison, bald eagles, deer, and coyotes, sitting just minutes from downtown Denver.

Nature, it turns out, can come back, given enough time and enough will.