THE LIFEBLOOD
with recruiting 25,000 men in 60 days for the 1st Battalion, 87th Infantry Mountain Regiment — the beginning of the 10th Mountain Division. William Sarge Brown, a Vail pioneer, was on a skiing and football scholarship at the University of Idaho around that time. When the war came along, Brown joined the Army, he recalls in a video interview with Hayden Scott on file at the ski museum. Brown passed away in 2008. Brown ended up training recruits at Ft. Jackson, S.C., but what he really wanted to do was head west to train with the ski troops.
Treat was skiing on the team at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in the early 1940s when he heard about a new group of ski troops the U.S. Army was putting together. Skiing was becoming popular in the United States, Treat remembers — colleges were forming teams all over the country, resorts were opening and movie stars were starting to get involved in the sport, too. “Things like that were happening, so we got into it at a time when it was young, fresh and exciting,” Treat said. “That’s where I think the passion came from.” That passion would eventually lead to the creation of the Vail ski resort, but first the ski troops, including Vail founder Pete Seibert, would endure
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strenuous alpine training and the bloodshed of war. RECRUITMENT
Treat saw a notice on a bulletin board at Dartmouth that advertised the ski troops and called for interested men to join. Treat, like other young American men who enjoyed skiing, was intrigued. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the U.S. entered World War II immediately after the attack. “We were particularly mad at the Japanese — we felt they overstepped by bombing our fleet like that,” Treat said. “The country was furious.” The idea of developing mountain troops in the United States first came up around 1940, when Charles “Minnie”
VAIL 50TH ANNIVERSARY G 2 012 K E E P S A K E E D I T I O N
Dole, the founder of the National Ski Patrol, thought American troops should follow the lead of the Finnish troops’ winter survival skills. He took the idea to the United States government, and the War Department later accepted the plan. According to the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame, a written contract between the American Ski Association and the Army made the National Ski Patrol an official recruiting agency. Dole was reportedly tasked
He was too valuable at Ft. Jackson, though, he recalls. “So I had to use a little political influence — my dad knew some people,” Brown said. “My transfer came down to Camp Hale, Colorado, in 1943-44.” TRAINING AT CAMP HALE
Construction of Camp Hale, between Leadville and what would someday be Vail, began in April of 1942. When Brown arrived at Camp Hale, the small city that could house 14,000 men was already built, and the
P H OTO S C O U R T E S Y VA I L T R A I L