When the History Colorado Center in Denver last year converted an underused portion of the center’s basement into a 5,000-square-foot exhibition space, a large showcase of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division ski troopers became the first exhibit to utilize the new location.
History Colorado is home to the 10th Mountain Division Resource Center and has collected thousands of donations from ski troopers and their families, starting in the 1980s when veterans of the 10th created the resource center to ensure that their artifacts and stories were preserved for future generations. Those artifacts and stories were used to create the new gallery, a temporary exhibit titled “ Winter Warriors: The 10th Mountain Division in World War II .” The large rooms in the newly renovated space contain enough area to showcase massive objects like an entire M29 Weasel cargo carrier, a fully set-up winter camping space and a statue of a pack mule, among many other items.
The items help tell the story of the 10th, starting not at its primary home in Eagle County’s Pando Valley , but in Fort Lewis, Washington, where the first ski troopers recruited by the National Ski Patrol trained on the slopes of Mount Rainier. The exhibit then delves heavily into the history of Camp Hale in the Pando Valley, detailing how prototype equipment like M29 Weasel tanks or lightweight waterproof tents were tested there, and how “four-legged recruits,” including 4,000 pack mules and 200 sled dogs, lived .
