Leading Colorado Democrats on Thursday asked President Joe Biden to use his executive powers to protect vast swaths of public lands in the state by using the Antiquities Act to designate Camp Hale and a surrounding mountain range, the World War II-era training site that spawned the state’s ski industry, as a national historic monument, among other proposed actions.

In a letter released Friday morning, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Gov. Jared Polis and U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse urge Biden to invoke the 1906 law and to enact other administrative protections for many of the iconic landscapes included in the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Economy Act, the sweeping public lands bill known as the CORE Act, which would protect more than 400,000 acres across the state.

The formal request follows a visit last week to the historic Camp Hale site by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who joined the four Colorado Democrats at the former Army camp near Leadville to hear from supporters of the legislation, which has been staled for years in the Senate.

“As we continue to push to get the CORE Act over the finish line, I join Coloradans in urging President Biden to take prompt action to protect Camp Hale, along with the other public lands in our bill,” Bennet said in a statement after Vilsack’s trip. Bennet’s office said the cabinet member committed to talking with Biden about the possibility of executive action to protect the Colorado areas.

Sponsored in the Senate by Bennet and Hickenlooper and in the House by Neguse, who chairs the House National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands Subcommittee, the CORE Act has passed the House five times, most recently last month as part of the national defense bill. It’s making its way through the evenly divided Senate but needs the support of at least 60 senators to get past a threatened Republican filibuster.

“This legislation has been built from the ground up with years of dedicated stakeholder engagement and enjoys bipartisan support, the Democrats say in the letter to Biden. “Regrettably, progress in Congress has stalled despite strong support in Colorado. The time has come to take the next step in protecting the key landscapes within the CORE Act and we need your help.”

The letter invokes the history of Camp Hale and the Ten Mile Range, where the 10th Mountain Division trained for mountain and winter warfare during World War II. Veterans of the division returned to the state after the war and established the state’s ski areas, the Democrats note.

Under the legislation and the proposed executive action, the camp and more than 28,000 surrounding acres would become the country’s first national historic landscape.

Bennet and the others are also calling on Biden to exercise his authority to ban fossil fuel leasing and mining on the Thompson Divide under the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act and to use that law’s mineral withdrawal provision and other administrative tools to protect the Grand Mesa Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests, areas proposed for wilderness designation in the legislation.

“By taking these steps, you will be making sure that even more of Colorado’s open spaces will be preserved for future generations,” the Democrats wrote. “We will continue our fight to pass the CORE Act to deliver permanent conservation for the areas featured in the legislation but ask for your help in the interim to offer administrative protections modeled after the bill.”

Aside from some numerous local officials, Colorado Republicans have mostly opposed the CORE Act.

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, the Silt Republican whose Western Slope-based 3rd Congressional District includes much of the land included in the legislation, last year called the bill “a partisan land-grab promoted by big-city Democrats who aren’t affected by the land-use bureaucracy that they are shoving down rural Colorado’s throat.”

The state GOP welcomed Vilsack to Colorado by deriding Bennet, who is seeking reelection this year, for failing to get the CORE Act out of the Senate.

“Where is the CORE Act? Why haven’t Democrats gotten it passed in a Democrat controlled government?” Colorado Republican Chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown said in a statement that noted the legislation is a “top priority” for Colorado’s two Democratic senators.

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