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 Tons
of Silver
Written by: Don Alexander
From 1941 to 1945 the rugged
mountains of Eagle County, Colorado and
Camp Hale were the temporary wartime
home for more than 14,000 U. S. soldiers
of the 10th Mountain Division. These
soldiers were trained as special ski
troopers, the elite alpine combat unit
who went on from Camp Hale to battle
with stubborn Nazi soldiers in the
rugged mountains of Northern Italy.
Today there is very little left for
the traveler to see of Camp Hale, while
driving along Colorado Highway 24
between Redcliff and Leadville. A few
concrete foundations are visible as
faint reminders of former wartimes; and,
a roadside turn-out with a bullet
riddled sign telling a brief story about
the former camp, are all that remain to
be seen.
If that is all there is to tell about
the former Camp Hale, and the men of the
10th Mountain Division, no need would
exist for the numerous searches I've
made in the abandoned and ghostly mining
camps dotting the nearby mountains and
canyons.
There is more to tell about Camp Hale
and events which almost certainly took
place during the heyday of the facility
when many soldiers were receiving their
ski trooper training.
Advance Party
What I am about to reveal to you
began, for me, when I was in Leadville
for the purpose of researching county
documents for information on some silver
mining properties I was considering
leasing. Having completed all I could do
for the day, I decided to go to
Leadville's best restaurant, have a
toddy and a good steak, call it a day
and in my motel room review the
information I'd been able to garner at
the Court House. To my surprise the
steak house was crowded with men I
judged to be all about the same
age...all hoisting drinks and having
good times on what appeared to be a
special occasion of some kind. It was a
very special occasion because this was,
as I quickly learned, the advance party
for a reunion of the 10th Mountain
Division and the men who had trained at
Camp Hale.
I worked my way through the crowd of
men and finally bellied up to the bar
and ordered what I had decided would be
my one drink before leaving to find
another place to eat. I had only taken a
couple of swallows of my drink and lit
up a smoke when, before I realized it, I
was tuning-in on a conversation taking
place directly in back of me. The men
were standing right in back of me and
were talking rather loud to overcome the
noise in the crowded bar. I was able to
overhear a conversation which caused me
to put aside the business which had
originally brought me to Leadville and
spend the better part of the next
eight-weeks searching for what I call
"Tons Of Silver."
Mind you now, I'm not the kind of guy
who'll, at the drop of a hat, jump into
something... especially something like
lost or buried treasure. Principally,
for the past four years, I'd been mining
gold and silver on a small scale in
Colorado, without much fanfare, and
eating pretty well.
Absolute Faith and
Conviction
Getting back to the story, it was the
absolute faith and conviction in what
was said, by those men talking in back
of me, as well as the history of the
Colorado silver mining country, that
convinced me what I was hearing was not
something conjured up with the aid of
alcohol but actually did take place and
in all probability does exist.
The GIs of World War II were drafted
or accepted as volunteers into the
military from every village, town and
city in the U.S.A.-- the men of the 10th
stationed at Camp Hale were certainly no
different. Fate, or the odds of chance,
however played an important part in the
story I overheard that night--the story
I am about to tell you. How else could
it all be explained... the just right
combination of personnel and the
specific set of circumstances
surrounding the ski trooper training
camp!
Camp Hale's isolated location far
from the capital city of Denver, bitter
cold mountain winters with deep and
drifting snows, arduous and exhausting
mountain training for these ski
troopers, wartime gasoline shortages,
rationing of critical supplies and
generally "no place special to
go" brought on many a hot stove
discussions and bull sessions about any
and everything. These discussion
sessions lead to the development of
friendships that eventually led to the planning
and execution of a wartime
venture yielding "Tons Of
Silver."
No illicit operation like this,
either in peace or wartime, could ever
have stood a remote chance of success
without certain highly skilled technical
people playing key roles. And, our
thanks must go to Uncle Sam for the
marvelous manner in which men from all
walks of life were so perfectly drawn
together, as did happen at the place
called Camp Hale.
Camp Hale Overheard
Here's the story I overheard that
night in Leadville. One person involved
was Gus, the only living son of a
long-time silver miner from Leadville,
and Gus was also an experienced silver
miner. Woody, a staff sergeant, was
either a geologist or a mining engineer
from Idaho whose knowledge and
experience certainly must have
contributed immensely to the success of
the project undertaken. And finally
there was a young man named Andrew, from
Ohio, who was studying chemistry at the
university when he decided to enlist and
become a ski trooper in the 10th
Mountain Division. Others necessary to
carry out the mission were a very vital
supply sergeant and several company
clerks to properly juggle paperwork in
order that this group always be given
some special training assignment to
perform in a remote area with no one to
observe their real activities.
From what I overheard, the other
members of this elite group had no
particular skills vital to what was
undertaken except that all who did
participate were disgustingly healthy
and physically strong young men.
My guess is that Gus and Woody,
possibly with Andrew, got the ball
rolling by somehow looking over old
mining dumps and poking into then closed
mines (recall that mining of silver and
gold was non-essential to the war effort
and prohibited by a regulation from the
government) for leads to overlooked
riches of silver and gold. That these
three GIs found what they were looking
for, there was no uncertainty among the
veterans of the 10th who stood talking
in back of me. By using what must
certainly have been juggled paperwork at
the camp the group was able to obtain
all the skis, snow shoes, tools for
drilling, digging and hauling plus the
explosives necessary to carry out their
operation, from the military supply
depot of Camp Hale.
Somewhere in the mountains between
Camp Hale and Leadville this
enterprising group of GIs uncovered an
extremely rich silver vein which they
mined for a period of time, the veterans
standing behind me had no doubts about
this.
By using abandoned or closed mines
and small mills, most of which had some
sort of equipment left behind, this team
of soldiers from Camp Hale was able to
mill most of the high grade ore they'd
mined and smelt the concentrates into
ore bars-- all stashed safely away for
post war recovery by those who would
survive the ravages of WW II. The
operation went smoothly for awhile but
eventually the crew's luck began to run
out: one soldier was killed by a broken
winch cable that literally sliced the
man's body in two and another GI was
trapped and died beneath the rubble from
a collapsed head wall of a mine tunnel.
Their records probably reflected that
the "injuries," which resulted
in the soldier's deaths, "were
sustained during classified training
accidents in arduous mountain terrain
under adverse weather conditions."
Death and Confidants
All good things eventually must come
to an end and so did the secret mining
operation. Orders to ship out were
finally received, the 10th Mountain
Division went to Northern Italy. The ski
troopers of the 10th engaged very
stubborn German forces in several
battles where nine enemy divisions were
wiped-out. The lives of more than 990 good men of the 10th
were lost in these battles...including
every last member of the elite mining
group who mined, milled and stashed the
"Tons Of Silver."
Just how did these tough old ski
soldiers know that this all happened the
way they said it did? They knew the
soldiers involved because they had lived
and fought with all of them. They knew
the group to be a tight lipped team who
always drew the same off-camp training
assignments, knew the team somehow always
managed to get furloughs at the same
time; and they knew that each man had big plans for post war years.
The fighting in the rough mountains
of Northern Italy did not claim all of
the lives of the members of the mining
team in one battle-- rather, one by one
they died in the fighting with the
Germans. And so, according to the
veteran members of the 10th who stood
behind me talking, the two surviving
members of the mining group, fearing
their own deaths were imminent, made
decisions to select a comrade and
confide enough of the details of the
illicit mining operation, as well as the
where-abouts of the cached "Tons Of
Silver", to enable the confidants
to locate and recover the stashed
treasure after the war. The two
soldiers, who, as part of the group, had
helped mine a treasure of silver were
killed in the fighting. The two chosen
confidants did survive the war, returned
to civilian life, and did travel to the
area of Camp Hale to search
unsuccessfully, it was said, for the
silver treasure.
I Believe It's There
All of what I had heard
fits. It made
sense to me! I believe that the
"Tons Of Silver" mined by the
men of the 10th is there waiting to be
found and recovered-- to make a man
wealthy for the rest of his life.
I am not unknowledgeable of the
fabulously rich silver mining history of
the Leadville area, i.e., Tabor, et al.
I strongly believe the mine illicitly
worked by the Camp Hale soldiers/miners
was located near Leadville and that
perhaps the mine had not been abandoned
in the legal sense of the word but only
closed under Regulation L as
non-essential to the war effort. If this
should be the case, it could be these
soldier-miners pulled off one hell of a
robbery without a single shot ever
having been fired.
But where's the cache?
Since that night in the Leadville bar
I've spent a lot of time quietly
looking, searching for the "Tons Of
Silver" which I believe must surely
be hidden waiting to be found. I've not
found the silver cache but I've found
some rusted tools which I believe could
have been hidden by the group.
Cache Of Silver Bars
Where is this cache of silver bars
supposed to be? Since I've had three
major back surgeries, and can no longer
mine or get out an actively search for
the cached "Tons Of Silver",
I'll tell you the remainder of what I
overheard that night in the Leadville
restaurant bar. Obtain maps of Eagle and
Lake Counties, showing both the
locations of former Camp Hale and
Leadville, now draw a straight line
connecting these two points. Now do the
same with/on appropriate topo maps and
you will have both a general and a
specific map of the search area/terrain.
Somewhere along the lines you have drawn
look for a high canyon with an old mine
up on the South face where there is
supposed to be a jeep road or trail
leading to the dump and mine buildings.
This is the location of the "Tons
Of Silver." The secreted location
of the ore bars is supposed to be in a
hole which was blasted into the stone
back wall of one of the buildings (it's
built into the side of the mountain).
That is it! I never found the right
canyon and I know that a topo map may or
may not show the particular mine in
question. Knowing also the severe
winters in the high mountain country of
the Colorado Rockies and the steepness
of the terrain in question, it could well
be an avalanche has destroyed, or
forever covered, the mine and buildings
with slide debris... maybe not! I
believe this happened as I heard the men
of the 10th say it had happened and I
believe the "Tons Of Silver",
a treasure of silver ore bars, is
waiting to be found. To you who decide
to search for this cache I wish both
luck and success. I hope you find the
"Tons Of Silver."
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Written by: Don Alexander
Copyright - November 23, 1988
originally
published
in
Popular Mining Magazine |
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