In 2025, public salutes were offered up to the U.S. Army for its 250 years of liberating, from securing America’s independence from Britain during the Revolutionary War to soldiering that crucially helped beat back the ominous spread of fascism during two world wars.

For more than a century of that, Black & Veatch has contributed to the cause through its engineering and construction prowess, never more on display than its work along the Rocky Mountains’ Continental Divide just months after the United States was drawn into World War II.

History books regale the Colorado site as Camp Hale. War buffs know it as the place where specialized training helped win the war.

Designed and built in 1942 by a partnership led by Black & Veatch, Camp Hale answered the call for a location where U.S. Army troops could be trained in mountaineering, skiing, winter survival and mountain warfare in preparation for what became their pivotal combat in the Italian Alps.

Design and construction over a six-month span, often in freezing temperatures, was no small feat, given the wartime shortage of labor and materials. At 9,200 feet above sea level in the Pando Valley, the camp completed in early 1943 became the United States’ first high-altitude training site for mountain troops – totaling some 15,000 men by the war’s end, according to accounts.

Black & Veatch chief electrical engineer John R. “J.R.” Smith later wrote that the camp was “a virtual city,” complete with a water system of five deep wells, three large wooden storage tanks, a wastewater treatment plant, two large incinerators, an ice plant, bakery, four theaters, field house and warehouses. Camp Hale — named after a U.S. brigadier general during the Spanish-American War — also featured dining areas, infirmaries, livestock stables and a movie theater.

The camp was deactivated after the war in November 1945, and many veterans who returned to the state helped launch Colorado’s ski industry. The camp was later dismantled, and there are only remnants of the former training base. 

Camp Hale got its federal tribute in October 2022, when President Biden proclaimed the site a new national monument under the Antiquities Act of 1906. The White House, in its announcement, noted “these peaks and valleys forged the elite soldiers of the famed 10th Mountain Division — the Army’s first and only mountain infantry division — that helped liberate Europe in World War II.” After the war, many of those soldiers returned to the area, lending their training and expertise to Colorado’s burgeoning ski industry.  

To learn more about Black & Veatch’s observance of the Army’s 250^th anniversary, through the eyes of one of our employee-owners who’s a veteran, click here.