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Camp Hale, home of 10th Mountain, as it looks today


hawkdriver
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From here, we drove down through the middle of the camp towards the old Bailey Bridge.

 

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On the other side of the bridge was this structure that shows up on a lot of websites. We walked through it and the interesting thing is that the wood floor is still partially in place.

 

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We continued across the camp the the east side where the troops used to practice rock climbing.

 

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We drove south along the south side of the base to the rifle ranges. It is hard to see in this picture, it is looking S.E across the ranges, but there are four berms built up with shooting to the south.

 

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On the SW side of the range was this sign by the target pits

 

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This is a view across the back of the target pits. For some reason, they are posted as bunkers but they are the target pits safe rooms.

 

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a view into one of the rooms, nothing spectacular.

 

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We spent a fair amount of time trying to find a souvenir, I wanted to try finding a fired round in the front of the berm. There were quite a few prarie dog and chipmunk holes and we sifted that dirt, but found nothing. Funny thing, prairie dog crap looks a lot like the penetrator out of a M2 ball round. I did find the rusted lid off of a M2 spam can. I put it in the truck and unfortunately forgot about it until after my bags were all packed, so I wasn't able to bring it on home. It will finish it's life rusting away on the hill behind the hotel.

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We ended up driving around the back of the camp and instead of taking us out to the south end of the camp, we ended up several miles south, so we decided to drive to Leadville. As we were crossing the continental divide, we came across the 10th Mountain memorial.

 

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The walkway had several more plates for reading.

 

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At the top of the display was two marble markers. These are very large with lots of detail, so I cut the pictures down but left them large sized so that you can pull them up and focus in on the names. So, if anyone knows a 10th Mountain guy KIA during WWII, his name should be here.

 

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And here are the names

 

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We left and went to Leadville where I found another antique store. This one had a ski, but it was more used and there was only one. I took a picture of the bottom to show how these were built. They wanted $118 for the single ski.

 

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After visiting most of the pubs and the guys fairly crocked, we drove back down 24 towards Camp Hale. We stopped at the last of the three turn-outs. These plates were fairly crazed from the sun and hard to read.

 

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As a final coup-de-grace, I took a final panoramic photo from full north to full south.

 

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Well, that is it, hope it was worth the time to read.

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RustyCanteen

This is a great thread! The photos are excellent and the scenery beautiful!

 

Thanks for giving us the tour! Seeing that large building from the ground sure is nice, I wonder if it was a mess hall?

 

RC

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I think it was some kind of maintenance facility. I didn't mention it, but there is a steel rail door track still in place, so the entire north end could be opened up. at the south end appeared to be some kind of large heater or something that took a lot of steel as much of it was still poking out of the ground.

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The Meatcan

great tour Hawk! must have been a ton of fun poking around those grounds Thanks for taking the time to post all your pix and write up the narrative!

Terry

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No problem, It was fun and I was glad to have the opportunity. I just wish I had a metal detector, may have to go back and try it again some time.

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I'm afraid that it has been fairly picked over. I had a friend who used to metal detect up there. Last I heard he was coming home with empty cartridges and smalls like that.

There is a antique mall on the main drag in Leadville that has good stuff every once in a while. Haven't been there this year to see what has turned up.

Here's some items that used to be in my collection that were from the family of the namesake of the camp.

 

(Broken Links Removed)

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I'm afraid that it has been fairly picked over. I had a friend who used to metal detect up there. Last I heard he was coming home with empty cartridges and smalls like that.

There is a antique mall on the main drag in Leadville that has good stuff every once in a while. Haven't been there this year to see what has turned up.

 

I was in that antique store, there was a few items, not much. Found a single ski, that is where the picture of the bottom of a ski come from. There were a few over priced cavalry items. The only thing I came away with was a box of Frankford Arsenal primers for the .30.

I can believe the place was picked over. I couldn't find a thing, surprised I found the spam can lid.

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