The commemoration of a training site at Camp Hale National Monument was a major event for the global Tibetan community on Sunday, with members of an international delegation visiting from as far as India. But for Dr. Carole McGranahan, a Tibet scholar anthropologist with the University of Colorado Boulder, it was the culmination of a goal she had quietly set for herself 14 years earlier — find the site and recognize it.
McGranahan had been working toward her goal since September of 2010, when a plaque honoring Tibetan freedom fighters who trained at Camp Hale from 1959-1964 was installed thanks to the efforts of Mark Udall, who was a U.S. senator from Colorado at the time.
It was the first official acknowledgment of Tibet’s history at the site, McGranahan said during a speech at the 2010 event. On Sunday, McGranahan recalled that event and how it prompted Sunday’s ceremony. “It was a beautiful day, similar to this,” McGranahan said.
“Some of the retired CIA officers and Tibetan veterans left the ceremony site to go find the site of the secret camp in which they had lived, some of them for several years.” They couldn’t find the site, McGranahan said. “This was a source of distress,” McGranahan said.
“So I made a silent vow, at that time, to do what I could to find the camp.” She told Vail area local Tracy Walters about the site, and showed him some pictures of the area. In February, Walters and McGranahan identified the location, and sent it to former C.