Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site on the Santa Fe Trail

One of the most evocative places to visit for history buffs of the Old West is Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site located on the plains of SE Colorado, just outside the town of La Junta. This reconstructed trading post was the last United States outpost for travelers before they would cross the Arkansas River and enter what was then a territory of Mexico, now New Mexico. The fort was originally built in 1833-34 by brothers Charles and William Bent, and Ceran St Vrain, as a trading post for the Native American fur trade.  Finding success the partners soon expanded and built other trading posts to the north and south and stores in Santa Fe and Taos.

Map Source

Bent's Fort soon became an important part of the Santa Fe Trail. The "Father of the Santa Fe Trail" was Captain William Becknell. In 1821 the land beyond Missouri was a vast uncharted region known only for its vast bison herds and Native American inhabitants. When Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, trade between Santa Fe and the United States became a possibility, and Captain Becknell was determined to cross the hostile territory to do trade, blazing a path that would become known as the Santa Fe Trail. Soon, many wagon trains were using the trail to head to the southwest. Two passages soon developed, one called the Cimarron Cutoff and the other the Mountain Branch over Raton Pass--see map above. Bent's Fort became an important stop for those on the Mountain Branch of the trail.

Travelers, traders, trappers, the US Army, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes came together at Bent's Fort to rest, eat, trade and buy supplies and repair their wagons.  The largest trade with the Native Americans was for bison hides in exchange for the white man's goods. The famous Western Scout, Kit Carson, was a hunter for the fort from 1831 to 1842.  The explorer John C. Fremont used the fort as both a staging area and replenishment junction for his expeditions. During the Mexican-American War, in 1846, the fort became a staging area for Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny's "Army of the West." Kearny went on to seize New Mexico for the United States, and seventeen hundred army men and volunteers used the fort as the rendezvous point for the invasion.

Bent's Fort is described as having been a structure 180 feet long and 135 feet wide, built of adobe bricks. The walls were 15 feet in height and four feet thick. It was the strongest post at that time west of Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

Some of the other principals in the history of Bent's Fort as displayed in a placard in the History Colorado Center exhibit. Please click on to enlarge this photo, and any other photo in this post, to enlarge them to see details.

Click on to enlarge

As one approaches Bent's Fort there is a gravestone of a stagecoach driver, Edward Dorris, who died in 1865 and is buried along with approximately 12 others in graves in a burial ground outside the fort. The Santa Fe Trail was always a perilous route and many perished along the route. On a prior blog post, about New Mexico, I showed one of the last grand landmark stops along the Santa Fe Trail, called Wagon Mound, where many settlers were attacked by Native Americans who were angry that their hunting grounds were being invaded and destroyed. Click here to read that post. That post also shows Raton Pass, which was the mountain pass the Santa Fe Trail traveled over.

Bent's Fort entrance is open to a large plaza surrounded on all sides by two level walls with staircases leading up to them ....

...and shaded walkways  along all the corridors leading into the varied rooms.

Primarily a trading post, Bent's Fort sold and traded goods in their general store. It was stocked with items such as calico fabric, blankets, cooking utensils, tobacco, muskets, gun powder, knives, buckets, medicines, beads, clay pipes, coffee, chocolate, corn, animal feed, writing material, and so on.

The fort was also operated by people of many nationalities and vocations, including blacksmiths, trappers, carpenters, wheelwrights, gunsmiths, cooks, cattle herders, clerks, etc.,  who would offer their services for a fee to visitors to the fort, 

The kitchen was staffed with cooks, including a slave of Charles Bent, Charlotte Green, who was famous for her pumpkin pies and flapjacks.

The ground level rooms also consisted of meeting rooms, and offices

As the resident Manager, William Bent oversaw all trade at the fort. He occupied private quarters in the fort, but also lived with his Cheyenne wife and family in their village as well. 

Bent's Old Fort often has days that feature costumed living history interpreters that provide guided tours and demonstrations, but my husband and I visited between tours and did a self guided tour instead, with literature provided by the staff. You can check the park web site for a calendar of events and tours held at the park on this link.

View of the fort entrance from the second floor...

...and from the other side of the ramparts.

It was interesting to see more of the re-construction of the fort that the National Park Services completed in 1976, as part of the United States Bicentennial Celebration, as well as the state of Colorado's Centennial Celebration. 

Most of the rooms upstairs were used for boarding, and were re-furnished in period style. 

There was even a billiard room upstairs. Billiards, card games, and chess and checkers were played to ease the long nights and days and help the fort's employees deal with boredom and home sickness.

A view of the Colorado plains from the roof top of the fort.

Often referred to as the "Castle on the Plains," Bent's Fort also had cannons for reinforcement.  The fort was never attacked, however, and the Bents worked hard to broker peaceful relations with all that they came in contact with.

More informational placards from the History Colorado Center. Click on to enlarge

After the war with Mexico, Charles Bent became the Governor of New Mexico, but on January 19, 1847, revolting Mexican and Pueblo Indians murdered him and other Americans in Taos.
The US government never paid the Bents compensation for using the fort for housing and supplying Kearny's troops during the Mexican American War. When there was a cholera epidemic and increasing unrest among southern Native American tribes who raided the Santa Fe Trail wagon trains, business declined at Bent's Fort and it fell on hard times. William Bent offered to sell the fort to the US Army in 1849, but they declined the offer. So a frustrated Bent moved his operations out and set fire to the fort, and abandoned it.
William Bent then built a new fort at the Arkansas River in 1853, known then as Big Timbers, but the glory days of trade were over, and it was not successful.  Bent leased this fort to the Army in 1860, which then constructed Fort Wise--later renamed Lyons-- nearby.  Ob November 29, 1864, Colonel John Chivington marched towards the Cheyenne Sand Creek Reservation, to destroy the native American's camped there, lead by the peace chief Black Kettle. Chivington posted a guard on William bent to prevent him from warning the Cheyenne leader and his people. You can read the story of the Sand Creek Massacre that occurred nearby in the placards above,  or on my blog post --here--about that event. William Bent died heartbroken in  Westport, Kansas in 1869.

Although most of Bent's Fort had been abandoned it was still used over time as stagecoach station and later as cattle corrals. In the 1950's the Colorado State Historical Society acquired the Bent's Old Fort and arranged for archaeological investigation to determine the fort's outlines. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1960.

Exhibit at the History Colorado Center of artifacts found at Bent's Old Fort.

More archaeological excavations occurred after it became part of the National Park Service system and the park was reconstructed in 1976 with the help from these artifacts, diaries sketches and paintings.  

Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site preserves for the future the remarkable history of the fort as a place of early trade, it's role on the historic Santa Fe Trail, as well as its role in Western Expansion. It is a fascinating place to visit to learn about the Traders, Tribes and Travelers of the old west!

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New Mexico--the Land of Enchantment

If you have been following along on my blog recently, you will know I've been chronicling about a trip my husband and I took in the fall, when we drove from our house in the Denver area to a family wedding in a suburb of Phoenix Arizona.  We first visited Mesa Verde National Park in SW Colorado, then the Four Corners Monument, also in SW Colorado, on through the Navajo Nation in Northern Arizona. While in Arizona we visited Saguaro National Park and the Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert.  When we left the Petrified Forest National Park we headed right into the state of New Mexico by Interstate 40. It was late afternoon, and we knew we had many miles to drive before we reached the hotel where we had reservations in Las Vegas, New Mexico, for the night, which would be about halfway home.
(All photos and collages in this post will enlarge if clicked on)

New Mexico's motto is "The Land of Enchantment," and it is easy to see why. The landscapes we passed along the road were spectacular!

The late afternoon sun gave the landscape a beautiful glow.

It seemed as if we could see for hundreds of miles all around us, and we watched as rain clouds gathered before us.

Finally, it began to rain in one area while a big beautiful rainbow formed in the sky in another area!

Mother Nature put on a beautiful show while we drove...

...and the rainbow followed us for many miles.

The rain stopped, but the large cumulus clouds remained on the horizon.

Such glorious scenery...

...we knew we would be back one day to explore more of New Mexico.

The sun began to set and it lit the sky with gold and crimson. 

As we approached Albuquerque, New Mexico, we drove NE onto Interstate 25, where we saw this tour bus in a gas station rest stop. Unfortunately, that is all we saw for the rest of the night, as the sunset and we drove the rest of the miles in darkness.

The next morning we checked out of our hotel and took a ride to the nearby Las Vegas National Wildlife Refuge. This 4,200-acre refuge and conservation area promotes the protection of private working ranches via conservation easements. Las Vegas is Spanish for "the meadows," and this is the perfect place to personify much of what this area topography consists of, both short and long grass prairie. The refuge has nature trails, scenic drives and an overlook observation deck to observe migrating birds and land animals.  If you click on to enlarge the collage above you can read more about the preserve and the animals that depend on the land. It was raining when we visited the preserve so we did not walk any of the trails, nor did I get any good photos of the wildlife, but it was still an interesting place to visit.

We also took a drive through the town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, that was established in 1835 by the Mexican government. During the Mexican America War in 1846, Stephan W. Kearney delivered an address at the Plaza of Las Vegas, claiming New Mexico for the United States.  Las Vegas became part of the Santa Fe Trail and its popularity grew,  A railroad came to the town in 1880 and the town continued to grow. Along with the development, however, came many new residents some of which had an unsavory element of the "wild west."  Notables were Doc Holliday, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Mysterious Dave Mather, and Hoodoo Brown.

Click on the photo of the placard above which shows a map of the Santa Fe Trail, that led from Independence, Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and describes its significance to the American West.

Just by serendipity, my husband and I happened to stop for gas for our car at the last grand landmark on the Santa Fe Trail called Wagon Mound.  The nearby butte was said to resemble a Conestoga Wagon, very much like the early settlers used to carry all their belongings and families west.

Wagon Mound butte was the last great landmark on the westward journey across the plains of northeastern New Mexico, and the guidepost seen by all travelers on the High Plains section of the Cimarron Cutoff of the Santa Fe Trail.  Click on the placard above to read more about this spot.

We continued driving north through the plains area of New Mexico.

There was not much to see in this area besides the beautiful clouds and sky.

We reached the border between New Mexico...

....and entered our home state of Colorado, where we would travel over more of the Santa Fe Trail over Raton Pass.

Raton Pass, at 7834 feet elevation, is a mountain pass and also a National Historic Landmark. The pass is located on the eastern side of the Sangre de Christo Mountains between Trinidad, Colorado and Raton, New Mexico, approximately 100 miles northeast of Santa Fe. The pass crosses the line of volcanic mesas that extend east.

If you click on the photos above and below you can read more about the pass and a brief history of the nearby town of Trinidad, Colorado.

Trinidad became a large coal mining town, and also became a melting pot of many ethnicities due to the abundance of mining jobs.  The coal mines closed over the years, but since the 1980s companies have been drilling gas wells here to extract coal bed methane gas.

Knowing we were a couple hundred miles from home we did not do any more stops along the way. As much as we love to travel, it is always good to return to the familiarity of home.

As we pulled into our driveway, we were welcomed home by a deer in our next-door neighbor's yard. I'm sure she also had a nice time eating my flowers while we were away--smile.  It was good to be back, with many happy memories and photos, that I have been delighted to share with all of you!