In order to give more than 50,000 federal acres a new set of protections that will prevent further mining, drilling, and other development, President Joe Biden will travel to Colorado on Wednesday. There, he will designate Camp Hale, a former military training facility from World War II, and the nearby Tenmile Range as America's newest national monument.

In order to prepare its troops for deployment to Italy during World War II, the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division trained its soldiers at Camp Hale in central Colorado. After the Army abandoned the location in 1965, it was added to the White River National Forest and is now a popular hiking and camping spot.

More than a dozen high-elevation peaks in the Tenmile Range, which runs north to south between the resort towns of Breckenridge and Copper Mountain, served as a training ground for the 10th Mountain Division.

A White House representative has confirmed that Biden will establish Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument on Wednesday while touring the storied military location. The site, which is nearly 54,000 acres in size and is bigger than Washington, D.C., will be managed by the U.S. Forest Service.

Although this will be Biden's first official designation as president, he has already restored three national monuments that his predecessor had demolished.

In addition, the Biden administration will start the process on Wednesday to impose a 20-year moratorium on all new drilling and mining operations over an additional 225,000 acres in Thompson Divide, which is also part of the White River National Forest.

The campaign was launched just a few weeks after Democratic leaders in Colorado urged Biden to use his executive power to protect Colorado lands in the face of obstacles to passing a conservation bill through a polarised Senate.


For many years, environmental and conservation organisations in Colorado have pushed for increased protections to guarantee that public access to outdoor recreation opportunities and the preservation of Camp Hale's history come before extractive interests like mining, logging, and oil drilling.

The 10th Mountain Division Foundation, a nonprofit organisation devoted to celebrating the legacy of the division's soldiers, is led by Nancy Kramer. William Robertson, her father, served as a medic for the 10th Mountain Division.

She remarked that the camp and the surrounding area are rich in military and Indigenous history, ecologically significant landscapes, and outdoor recreation opportunities, adding that it will be one of the more diverse monuments.

"There are a lot of similar landscapes and stories among the 129 monuments," she continued. There aren't many that even come close to what this speaks to, and that's what's cool about this.

According to a poll conducted in July and released by the Center for Western Priorities, a sizable majority of the public supports protecting wild lands. 90% of respondents from Western states said they care about national public lands, parks, and wildlife, and 81% said that these issues have an impact on their voting decisions.

But in recent years, it has become more challenging to designate lands as federally protected wilderness areas due to polarisation in Congress.

Over the course of more than ten years, Colorado members of Congress have made numerous attempts to increase Camp Hale's protections. A 2011 bill that would have required the Department of the Interior to investigate whether to transfer it to the National Park Service was never implemented.

The Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy Act, which would establish new wilderness areas in the state and designate the 30,000 acres surrounding Camp Hale as the nation's first "National Historic Landmark," has been pushed by Democratic members of the Colorado delegation over its last two sessions.

But without Republican backing, the bill failed. The bill was opposed by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who referred to it as a "land grab" supported by "leftists and extremists."

When discussing the difficult path leading to Wednesday's monument announcement, Kramer became emotional.

We're overjoyed, grateful, and thrilled about the recognition, she said. "This has taken many years of work, and the majority of the veterans have long wished to see it preserved. The time has come.


The president has broad authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to declare national monuments on federally owned land in order to preserve distinctive landscapes and cultural heritage. Key elements of the impassed Colorado bill will be successfully saved by Biden's actions on Wednesday.

According to deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities Aaron Weiss, "Voters don't care how land gets protected in the end." "All they want is for it to be protected."

The Biden administration set an ambitious target to conserve at least 30% of American public lands by 2030 just days after taking office. The term "conserve" has not yet been defined by administration officials, but those who support wild lands typically regard federally designated wilderness areas as the benchmark.

Mountain bikes, motorised vehicles, drilling for oil and gas, or the extraction of minerals are not permitted in wilderness areas. They may, however, allow sheep and cattle to graze.

The administration is coming under more and more pressure to create new monuments, as Biden promised to do during the campaign. After almost two years in office, the administration is just now beginning to deliver on that commitment. It seems to be considering a number of other locations in addition to Camp Hale for future designation.

Deb Haaland, the secretary of the Interior Department, paid a visit to Avi Kwa Ame, also known as Spirit Mountain, in southern Nevada in September. Several Native American tribes revere this location.

A broad national monument has been proposed by a coalition of tribes and environmentalists that would connect the mountain to other protected lands. Biodiversity is better protected by vast tracts of connected land than by isolated areas.

In March, Haaland also went to the Castner Range, which is another potential national monument outside of El Paso, Texas.