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| -Short Attention Span Theater- | |
| Located on a lonely mountain plain in Colorado ski country, the silver-rush-era town of Leadville holds secrets as deep as its tunnels and old mine workings. | |
| 2025-03-10 | |
The highway climbs through aspen forest glinting gold in the Sun, rising through zigzag gullies, escarpments and precipices onto a high mountain plain so lonesome it seems to hum with silence. Snowdrifts huddle at the road's verges and on it goes persistently, almost gasping for air, past lonely farms beneath besieging summits. There are many superlative road trips to take in North America, but if you find yourself on US Route 24, driving through Lake County in Colorado's Rocky Mountains, know you are on an old road to somewhere extraordinary. Among the places on this storied route is Leadville, with a reputation often chalked up to its elevation. At 3,109m (10,200ft), it's the highest incorporated city in North America. But while the town is always in danger of being dwarfed by the surrounding landscape, the setting also reveals much mythology about Colorado's most lionised subjects: the gold rush and the Wild West. "So many people, Americans included, are so unfamiliar with our story," said Katie Hild, manager of Leadville's Tourism and Visitor Center, housed today in the original red sandstone American National Bank building. "This is a town that's been shaped by bust and boom – so much has happened here." But wherever you go in Colorado in winter these days, the subject everyone is obsessed with is not silver dollars, but snowfall — and 11 miles farther along US Route 24, the next chapter in Leadville's untold history is slowly revealed. Ski Cooper isn't Colorado's most celebrated mountain resort, but where it beats others in the state is it retains the authenticity of a mountain as it used to be. Non-profit and municipality owned, it looks out to Mount Elbert, the state's highest mountain at 4,399m (14,433ft). More than that, the landscape has the emptiness that purists seek away from the surrounding busier towns. "Cooper is not a resort, but a place to come skiing," said head of operations Patrick Torsell. "We only have three lifts – nothing compared to the mega-resorts – but Leadville locals have a strong relationship with us and our history. It's a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches in the parking lot kind of place." Likewise, this is a mountain that covers its tracks well. For this is where Colorado's ski culture began. The story starts with the first mountain unit in US military history, the 10th Mountain Division of World War Two. In summer 1941, its soldiers received extensive training in winter warfare on Cooper Hill, constructing what was then the world's longest draglift. Then, in the winter of 1944-1945, three of its regiments marshalled a series of surprise attacks during a surprise offensive in Italy's Apennine Mountains. It's a melancholy tale: around 1,000 soldiers were killed and 4,000 injured. And yet, their actions were instrumental in Germany's later surrender. What many don't know is following their return to the Rockies, the 10th's veterans shaped the American ski industry. More than 66 ski resorts were managed or founded by former military personnel, including Aspen, Vail and Arapahoe Basin – and this taps into a broader strain of patriotism among locals today. At Arapahoe Basin, during the 1953-1954 season, for instance, the unit installed the first Poma lift in the US. Then, in 1957 at Winter Park, they constructed two draglifts said to be the fastest in the world. The division's backcountry cabins, once used for deep-snow combat training, are now open to visitors to book year-round. But that's not all. Six miles from Leadville in the Pando Valley, the 10th Mountain Division trained at Camp Hale. Sitting between sheer-sided rocky spurs and snow-daubed mountains with the Eagle River winding nearby, it was once a sprawling encampment of 14,000 soldiers, 226 barracks, 100 mess halls, three theatres, a chapel, horse and mule barns and a hospital. Little remains nowadays, but a 10-stop self-guided tour of relics snakes past ammunition bunkers, a guard shack and a field house. To be so rapidly transplanted from pistes to pistols fires the imagination. The best story at Camp Hale concerns the CIA, which took over the base in the 1950s to train secretive special ops teams. At one time, 170 Tibetans were drafted in for secret operations against the Communist government in China. The unexpected coda is locals were told it was a test site for bombs. Nowadays, with snowshoe, hiking, biking and horse-riding trails, it is a less-assuming and simpler world away from the currents of history.&” | |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #1 Spent 6 years living, working and training in the mountains west of Denver, 8-10,000 ft. Couldn't touch the Leadville Marathon. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2025-03-09 13:17 |