How $5M in federal funds will help restore the Eagle River through Camp Hale
Entire process at new national monument will be costly and take years
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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the early 1940s was given a job in the Pando Valley. The result was Camp Hale, the first home of the 10th Mountain Division.
The engineers hauled in countless cubic yards of fill dirt and ran a formerly-meandering stretch of the Eagle River string-straight for more than 5 miles. The result was a good base for this country’s first mountain soldiers, but had a serious impact on the valley’s environment, filling in wetlands and eliminating the river’s ability to maintain healthy aquatic life.
The state of the river through Camp Hale is likely to get a boost from a $5 million influx of federal funding for the Collaborative Aquatic Restoration Program. The money comes from the so-called “Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” a 2021 bill that provided $1.2 trillion for a host of projects around the nation.
The new funding will help restart an effort at river restoration, which now has to mesh with a management plan for the Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument that was created in 2022. The nearly 54,000-acre monument includes land in Eagle and Summit Counties.
‘A great start’
“We’re really excited,” Eagle-Holy Cross District Ranger Leanne Veldhuis said, adding the money can rebuild momentum toward completing plans for the national monument.
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Walking Mountains Science Center started operations in Red Cliff, and founder Kim Langmaid knows a thing or two about the state of that stretch of river.
Langmaid said the new federal funding is a “great start” for work on the river and the monument.
Langmaid said a watershed restoration plan has been in place for some time. Restoring the river in that area — a segment defined as 6.8 miles of stream and 120 acres of wetlands — represents “places we can really move the needle in wetland restoration,” Langmaid said, noting that the area is home to a host of species. “It has so many (ecological” values associated with it,” she said.
But, Langmaid added, the committee once tasked with developing a restoration plan is no longer working.
- Camp Hale was built in the early 1940s in the Pando Valley between Red Cliff and Leadville
- The site was used as the base for the U.S. Army’s then-new 10th Mountain Division
- The site was used in the early 1960s to train Laotian fighters for a conflict in that nation
- The site in 2022 was declared a national monument
Veldhuis noted that public input and stakeholder groups will be used to help develop new plans for the monument.
Those stakeholders include community groups, as well as representatives from the Ute tribe.
Veldhuis noted that while Camp Hale has its history, there are “thousands of years” of human presence in the high valley.
Restoration efforts will have to somehow retain the evidence of that human history, she said.
And the river restoration isn’t just a matter of taking the river out of its 1940s-vintage channel.
Forest Service officials will have to work closely with the Army Corps of Engineers to check for unexploded munitions or remains of asbestos used in buildings.
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Given the area in which an active military unit trained, it’s likely that unexploded munitions remain in places in the heavily forested hillsides. Veldhuis noted that a practice landmine was discovered just last summer.
Eagle River Coalition Executive Director James Dilzell noted that the entire process is going to be expensive and take a long time to complete.
Veldhuis said with the new federal funding, the full monument management plan and compatible river restoration plan could be finished within the next three to five years.
