TENNESSEE PASS, Colo. — President Joe Biden stood at the ruins of a World War II winter warfare training camp high in the Colorado mountains Wednesday, formally designating a new, 84-square-mile Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument, and celebrated the wildness of the West.
“You can feel the power of this place,” Biden said, basking in a landscape studded with green pines and golden aspens that he called “sacred,” lauding Ute stewardship across centuries. While addressing a gathering of state and national leaders beneath a cliff, he extolled “soaring peaks, steep canyons, black bears, bald eagles, mountain lions, waterfalls, pristine rivers, alpine lakes and the scent of wildflowers.”
He also spoke about the West broadly, at one point quoting from the late environmental activist and writer Edward Abbey on “the most beautiful place on Earth….many such places” that “every man, every woman carries in heart and mind.” Biden recalled his own family trips skiing – “all those memories that you all understand and take for granted, they are a big deal where I come from” – and hiking in the Grand Canyon, which he called a cathedral.
