TENNESSEE PASS — Federal land managers have embarked on a $30 million project to remake a Colorado mountain valley that during World War II was transformed into an elite military training base.
The ecological restoration along headwaters of the Eagle River — home of the famed 10th Mountain Division — would require scooping out millions of tons of gravel and sand to turn a straightened waterway back into a river that curves through a floodplain.
It would mean yanking nonnative thistles and other invaders across 2,000 acres, recontouring and revegetating with native flowers and willows.
“A lot of our pristine headwaters in Colorado have had impacts. This is an opportunity to restore the ecosystem in an area that has historic value — and make it better,” said Marcus Selig, regional director of the National Forest Foundation, which led creation of a 50-page master plan. “Our goal is to put the area on a trajectory to be natural. We’ll engineer the floodplain. We’ll design it so that high flows in spring can restore a balance.”
But historic preservation of scattered concrete foundations of the Army base looms as a hurdle. And water pressures complicate restoration. Colorado Springs and Aurora own rights to groundwater under the headwaters, within a 30,700-acre watershed, and to snowmelt trickling down surrounding rocky peaks.
A project proposal put forth this month by the U.S. Forest Service preserves the option of cities drilling into a re-engineered valley to reach groundwater and building a reservoir above wetlands to supply residents along Colorado’s increasingly populated Front Range.
If the project survives bureaucratic review and gets funding, it would rank among the nation’s most ambitious feats of ecological restoration. It reflects a growing interest among restoration ecologists in “novel ecosystems” — recognizing that exact replication of nature before it was altered may be unfeasible, while embracing the role of revived natural processes.
“We’re restoring it to its current potential,” Forest Service fisheries biologist Matt Grove said. “We have to look at the stream we have now. We don’t have the unaltered thing.”
The plan incorporates post-war recreational uses of the area such as camping and skiing to backcountry huts that 10th Mountain Division war survivors built in memory of slain comrades. And it calls for state-of-the-art historical interpretation at sites around what became Camp Hale, which once had a population of 17,000.
All that remains of the camp are foundations of an ammunition depot, firing range, field house and a “Nazi village” where recruits endured training scenarios of what military planners imagined they’d face during combat. Asbestos and unexploded bombs still are spread around the watershed.
World War II veterans initially bristled at ecological restoration, fearing it would erase too much of Camp Hale. The 10th Mountain Division’s representative, Gary Burton, part of a 40-member planning group, conferred with veterans nationwide.
“Some just wanted the land left alone,” Burton said. “But most said, ‘It has performed its function for us. Let’s preserve our history, but let’s also put it back into some form of ecological function.’ “
In 1845, Gen. John Fremont led explorers through the area, which then was rich in deer, elk, foxes, bears, songbirds and native trout. A government survey crew in 1873 set course for 14,009-foot Mount of the Holy Cross, towering over the Eagle River, and photographer William Jackson documented the beauty for the world.
A railroad was built in 1881, and gold and silver miners followed. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt declared a Holy Cross Forest Reserve, trying to keep habitat untrammeled.
But after Japan’s World War II attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. leaders announced they’d build a base in Colorado to train special new soldiers to fight Nazi forces in the European mountains. Recruits at Camp Hale learned to move through blizzards and scale cliffs. The 10th Mountain soldiers later played a key role in Italy dislodging of Nazi forces from Riva Ridge. The CIA later used the camp to train Tibetan fighters.
Building the base, however, snuffed delicate wetlands. Songbirds and native trout vanished. Once-wild Eagle River headwaters, forced into a straight ditch, no longer formed pools. Willows disappeared. Nonnative yellow toadflax, Canadian thistle and musk thistle invaded, water temperatures spiked, stream banks eroded and wildlife diversity diminished from stone flies on up the food chain.
A Forest Service notice last week launched a public-comment period on the project. Agency planners said reviews should be done by June 2016. Current plans say the project would not prevent water rights holders from developing new supplies for diversion to cities.
Aurora and Colorado Springs are exploring options for building a reservoir above re-engineered wetlands and possibly using underground aquifers to store water, Aurora Water spokesman Greg Baker said. Restoration of the wetlands could help water utilities offset environmental harm elsewhere by contributing to the project, he said, and timed releases from a reservoir could help sustain a remade valley.
Local landowner Lee Rimel, a planning group member, characterized the past 18 months of multiparty discussions as immensely cooperative.
“There’s an overall agreement that there will be a reservoir somewhere in that area,” Rimel said. “It’s important that we re-establish the wetlands that existed before 1942 — because the habitat, as it is now, does not support natural native wildlife, fish or animal.
“There are very few opportunities elsewhere with this kind of acreage readily available for restoration to native condition.”
Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700, bfinley@denverpost.com or twitter.com/finleybruce
