There’s a lot of talk in town about Camp May. I did a post on it a few weeks ago and you can visit that HERE. But Camp May wasn’t the only staging area used by the Los Alamos Ranch School for fun outdoor adventures. Camp Hamilton was more well known by the boys than Camp May and the cabin at Camp Hamilton eventually became part of the Ice House during the Manhattan Project. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

If you Google Camp Hamilton and Los Alamos you’ll find dozens of references to trails. A connecting trail, the Ranch School Trail, the Camp Hamilton Trail, and even the Tent Rocks Trail which intersects with the Camp Hamilton Trail at one point and has an interesting and entwined history with Camp Hamilton. The existing Camp Hamilton Trailhead is located down near the county maintenance buildings on Camino Entrada. From here you can still hike down to the remains of the old cabin which used to play such a huge part in the Ranch School Boys’ introduction to life on the Pajarito Plateau. The actual remains of the cabin sit on the southern edge of the decommissioned Bayo Canyon Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Camp Hamilton wasn’t called that to begin with. It was Camp Awanyu. The man who obtained the first land leases for that beautiful spot in lower Pueblo Canyon is known as F. Coomer. Nobody knows what F stands for, but the man did quite a booming business with his Rocky Mountain Camp Company. At that time, the West was becoming a popular vacation destination. Beginning in the first few decades of the 1900s, the “See America First” Campaign was being advertised to Americans nationwide. Automobiles were becoming more common. Folks were starting to travel. And the Rockies became a popular place to visit!

Coomer guided travelers and tourists through the Pajarito Plateau’s beautiful scenery using cabins like the one he built at Camp Awanyu as staging areas. One of the things that made his location such a great starting point is the same reason so many of our still popular trails cross each other within just a few miles or yards of each other in that area. The local collection of tent rocks, Tsankawi, and the Buckman Mesa were very popular geographical features with tourists in the 1900s just as they are today. Coomer utilized seven passenger vehicles to cruise through the canyons and show his guests the amazing West.

When Coomer gave up the tour business in 1926, the parents of a Los Alamos Ranch School student named Sam Hamilton donated enough money for the school to buy out Coomer’s land lease and renovate the cabin. The ranch school added a kitchen, a stone fireplace, and a window with a view down the canyon. Because of it’s accessibility by car, it’s location in the midst of the Ponderosa Pines and the closeness to other trails, sites, and ruins, the ranch school began using Camp Hamilton as a place to introduce new students to life on the Pajarito Plateau.

Many of the younger boys just starting school didn’t have much experience with riding. They couldn’t tie a diamond hitch or balance a pack pannier. They needed some time to be introduced to outdoor skills that would become the backbone of their success at LARS. Camp Hamilton became just that.

This doesn’t mean the older boys didn’t find Camp Hamilton useful. There were several older students who used Camp Hamilton as a base camp to study and photograph nearby ruins and geographical features. While the older boys were at Camp Hamilton, they often acted as camp counselors, cooking, cleaning, and helping to introduce their younger schoolmates to outdoor life. The older boys would generally come down from the ranch school by horseback utilizing what we now call the Ranch School Trail.

If you have the chance, hike the Camp Hamilton Trail or the Ranch School Trail in order to check out the incredible views. It’s so cool to see solid evidence of the amazing can do attitude of the Los Alamos Ranch School boys! Several stacked stone retaining walls still hold the trail in place on narrow ledges and in several areas deep grooves had to be cut into the volcanic tuff using picks and other hand tools. The trails are considered to be some of the oldest purpose built equestrian trails in the region and were intentionally created using switchbacks to allow pack animals to pass up and down.

The cabin certainly doesn’t look today as it did when the boys were enjoying it. Some trail bloggers have declared it to be in “deplorable condition”. A good portion of it was salvaged to build the Ice House during the Manhattan Project era. But the current condition of the cabin doesn’t negate the wonderful history of that area. A place where young students of the Los Alamos Ranch School learned to live, work, and play in the unforgiving conditions on the Pajarito Plateau.

Nowadays, Camp Hamilton can serve a similar purpose to those who hike down for a peek and a few gorgeous photographs. Life in Los Alamos is soaked in history, scenery, and unique experiences! So when you’re ready to join our unique community, give me a call. I’m a hometown girl who loves to chat about real estate in Los Alamos!

Looking for more info on Camp Hamilton? I’ve enjoyed Sharon Snyder’s blog post for the Los Alamos Historical Society HERE. You can also find some excellent trail descriptions from the Los Alamos Woods Wanderer HERE.