The 10th Mountain Division was created for alpine and winter combat during World War II and prepared for battle on the steep, inhospitable terrain of Camp Hale, about twenty-five miles southwest of here. Built at an old railroad sheep-loading stop, the base opened in 1942 with 8,000 recruits, many of them veteran mountaineers. Their specialized training kept them above 10,000 feet for days on end, poling cross-country under ninety-pound loads; these exercises increased endurance and taught important wilderness and cold-weather survival skills, but they also sent hundreds to sickbay with frostbite and hypothermia. During the war, Camp Hale housed 15,000 military personnel and hundreds of German POWs; today the area serves thousands of civilian skiers at Ski Cooper and on the 10th Mountain Division Hut System. Steeled by the rigors of Camp Hale, the division fought heroically in World War II under Maj. Gen. George Hays through the Apennine Mountains north of Florence, Italy, in the winter of 1944-1945, helping lead the Allied advance into the Po River Valley. Nine German divisions fell before the outfit, whose own casualties of more than five thousand killed or wounded reflected the grimness of its task. After the war, returning 10th Mountaineers applied their training to peaceful pursuits by helping launch many major ski resorts across the country and improving ski equipment, safety, and instruction. By 1999, nineteen former soldiers of the division had been enshrined in the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame.
