Interesting/unusual facts
Amache was named after a Cheyenne woman who married John Prowers, a rancher for whom the county is named.
Unlike other centers built on federal land, the 10,500 acres of the Granada Relocation Center were acquired by purchase or condemnation of eighteen privately owned ranches and farms, arousing the anger of some local residents.
Amache had the smallest population of the relocation centers but was the tenth largest "city" in Colorado.
Instead of post and pier foundations, barracks had slab foundations, or concrete perimeter foundations with brick floors. The buildings also had asbestos shingle siding, rather than the tarpaper common at most of the other relocation centers.
The high school, with an auditorium/gymnasium building, was complete in 1943. This was the most expensive building constructed in Prowers County up to that time. Some local residents and politicians were opposed to the construction of a new elementary school. Instead, elementary classes were held in the barracks of Block 8H.
In spite of its small population, Granada had one of the largest and most diversified agricultural enterprises of the ten relocation centers. Granada had the advantage over the other centers in that its fields and canals were already in place and needed only minor repairs.
A small building at the cemetery may have been used by the internees to store cremated remains.
After the camp closed, its central area was sold to the town of Granada for $2,500.00.

Land Ownership
All of the land within the site is owned by the town of Granada today.

Special Designations
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, 1994.

Preservation and Interpretive Efforts
A ten-foot-tall monument with "Amache Remembered" inscribed was placed at the cemetery by the Denver Central Optimists Club in 1983. In 1994, the Denver Central Optimists Club received a grant from the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund to resurface roads, rehabilitate the cemetery, and install interpretive signs.
The Amache Preservation Society installed new interpretive signs, a flagpole, planted trees and re-roofed the monument building in 2002.
There are pans for an intensive archeological survey of the site.
When funding is available, seven barracks will be returned to the site and a visitor center providing full interpretive services will be established at the front gate.
The Granada High campus Amache Museum has camp artifacts on display.
Tours of Amache conducted by high school teacher John Hopper and his students are available year-round.

Public access to the site today
Visitors may get a key to the gate from the High School principal or at the Granada City Council office in Granada.
Inside the fenced area, nearly all relocation roads are intact and passable. Additional signs direct visitors to the relocation center cemetery, where one may see marked graves and the brick structure with the granite slab monument. A reservoir and concrete building foundations also remain. One of the relocation center wells serves as a water source for the town.

Local Resources
Amache Preservation Society: run by teacher John Hopper and his students from Granada High School,
P.O. Box 2, Granada, CO 81041
Tel: 719-734-5260
Email: amache@usa.com

Amache Historical Society:
22587 Waterbury Street
Woodland Hills, CA 91364
Minorai "Min" Tonai, President

James Hada: Denver Optimist Club
2390 Vance, Lakewood, CO 80215
Tel: 303-237-2159

Selected Books
Japanese American Internment History Project, Standing Guard: Telling Our Stories. The Standing Guard Publication Group, Sierra College, 2002. A collection of oral histories chronicling the Placer County community and its internment story. Some people originally interned at Tule Lake were transferred to Granada after Tule Lake was designated a segregation center.
Johnson, Melyn. "At Home in Amache: A Japanese American Relocation Camp in Colorado." Colorado Heritage, 1989.

Websites
www.amache.org.
The official Amache Preservation Society site, with historical photographs and basic information about the camp and efforts to preserve it.

www.archives.stat.co.us
Provides access to the Colorado State archives with a number of collections and photographs on internment at Granada.

www.writingproject.org/resources/internment.htm
This site contains pictures and quotes about life in the Granada Relocation Center.