Located in central Colorado between Red Cliff and Leadville in the Eagle River Valley at an elevation of 9,238 feet (2,815 m), it was named for General Irving Hale.

[9] The War Department chose the location at 9,200 feet (2,800 m)[10] because the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad stopped at Pando rail station and historically the snowfall in the Tennessee Pass area was plentiful.

Construction of the camp began in the spring of 1942 and finished seven months later; during that period Highway 24 was moved, a sewage system installed to prevent pollution in the nearby town of Red Cliff, and the meadow drained.

Additionally, the nearby town of Leadville to the south, the only source of recreation for the trainees, was persuaded to change its moral character, perceived "to be on a rather low plane."

The camp included mess halls, infirmaries, a ski shop, administrative offices, a movie theater, and stables for livestock.

[8] Conditions in the camp were harsh: the altitude required acclimation and the shallow valley created polluted inversion layers, as the primary energy source was coal.

[8] Located three miles (5 km) south of the camp, Cooper Hill had on-site barracks for the instructors and a newly built T-bar lift for the trainees.

[18] On 15 February 1944, guard Private Dale Maple of the 620th Engineer General Service Unit drove away with German Sergeants Heinrich Kikillus and Erhard Schwichtenberg.

The Tibetans nicknamed the camp "Dhumra", meaning "The Garden", due to their enriched hatred of the Chinese occupation of their country.

From 1958 to 1960, Anthony Poshepny trained various special missions teams, including Tibetan Khambas and Hui Muslims, for operations in China against the communist government.

An Eagle County non-profit organization, SOS Outreach, has used the site to expose disadvantaged youth to many of the same outdoor challenges experienced by the 10th Mountain Division.

[25] In 1962, Pete Seibert, who was among the soldiers who trained at Camp Hale and then returned to the area after the war, founded the Vail Ski Resort nearby.

[26] In 2003, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began a cleanup effort to remove some of the unexploded ordnance at the site in conjunction with several other government agencies.

[27] In 2019, the Camp Hale site was proposed to be the first National Historic Landscape, under the Colorado Outdoor Recreation & Economy (CORE) Act, which would designate 28,728 acres for preservation.