After the disappointing Mexican food in La Junta, I headed out to Bent’s Old Fort.
Bent’s Old Fort was an important fur trading post and cultural crossroads on the Santa Fe Trail during the 19th century. Established in 1833 by brothers William and Charles Bent, along with their partner, Ceran St. Vrain, the fort was strategically located along the Arkansas River in what is now southeastern Colorado. It served as a hub for traders, trappers, travelers, and Native American tribes, facilitating commerce and cultural exchange between the United States and Mexican territories. The fort was constructed primarily of adobe and featured a plaza, high walls, and living quarters, all of which reflected a blend of Mexican adobe architecture and American trading post design. Over time, it became a well-known landmark on the frontier until its abandonment in 1849 due to trade route changes and cholera outbreaks.
In the 1950s, the reconstructed Bent’s Old Fort emerged as a project to revive this significant piece of American history. Using detailed historical accounts, including drawings and descriptions by visitors in the 1830s and 1840s, the National Park Service undertook the task of rebuilding the fort to its former state. The reconstruction was completed in 1976, allowing visitors to step back in time and experience life on the Santa Fe Trail. Today, Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site operates as an open-air museum with living history demonstrations that depict the diverse cultural interactions among traders, travelers, and Native Americans who once converged at this bustling trading post.
You actually don’t park right at the fort you park a short walk away. By the entry or number, picnic tables and graphics, sharing a bit of the history.
The walk to the Ford is about a quarter of a mile and there are a few things you might want to watch out for especially in the summertime.
On the way is a graveyard that contains the remains of of a about a dozen people who died near the fort when it was still active.
The door of the fort is quite impressive and certainly would be difficult to break through back in the 1800s.
I spent a couple of hours wandering through the fort going room by room, following the map from the park service. Below is a huge photo dump of the images from my visit. The one thing that’s not completely clear is that the livestock was kept outside the walls, but was also walled.
Bent’s Old Fort is a fascinating place to learn about the history of the Old West and is a brilliant reproduction of an Old West fort.
One of the things that’s very striking, as I’ve learned about the history of the Old West, is how well things were working when traders were first moving into the area. The company that owned Bent’s Old Fort had relationships, trading agreements, and activity in Central America and all the way into the Orient.
It wasn’t until the new arrivals from Europe in the Americas lust for land and eventually the Homestead Act that things got really nasty in the Old West.
As I drove away from the parking lot, I found the original entrance to the fort along with the some placards.
