Step back in time at Bent’s Old Fort

Editor’s Note: Corrected opening date of Bent’s Old Fort to 1833.

(SOUTHEAST COLORADO) — Two hours southeast of Colorado Springs, you will find a castle-like fort built in the 1800s. Nearly 200 years later, Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site continues to be a meeting place for travelers looking to step back into the past.

Begin your visit by viewing exhibits at the information kiosk near the parking lot. Then take a short walk to the fort where you can enjoy tours, programs, a film, and activities.

In the decades after the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, even as the earliest explorers crossed the continent, America’s economic frontier expanded westward. Trappers went into the Rocky Mountains for beaver. Plains Indigenous showed their willingness to trade buffalo robes. The first wagons rolled between the Missouri River and Santa Fe, initiating regular commerce with Mexico.

Traders Charles and William Bent and their partner Ceran St. Vrain sought to establish a base where they could take advantage of all these trade opportunities. In 1833, they opened a fort (then called Fort William) on the north bank of the Arkansas River, the boundary between the United States and Mexico. It was close enough to the Rockies to draw trappers; near hunting grounds of Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, and other tribes; and on the Santa Fe Trail, near a ford across the river.

Bent, St. Vrain & Company built their trading fort in a region that had few trees to use in construction. So they turned to a building material long favored by Mexicans: adobe. This material was made on-site from clay, water, sand, and straw. It was formed into bricks, which then dried in the sun. Mexican laborers, usually women, maintained the adobe plaster. With this care, the adobe bricks proved reasonably durable in the dry climate.

After two months on the trail, travelers greatly anticipated this haven. It was the only place between Missouri and Santa Fe where they could refresh themselves and their livestock, repair wagons, and replenish supplies.

In 1846, the fort (by then, called Bent’s Fort) was used for more than trading. Because the Bents were effective peacemakers with the tribes, their fort was headquarters for the Upper Platte and Upper Arkansas Indian Agency. It also became a military staging point for the United States’ invasion of Mexico’s northern provinces. Storerooms were filled with military supplies, some soldiers were quartered at the fort, and military livestock stripped the land.

The military, and in later years, the growing stream of settlers and gold seekers, disrupted the carefully nurtured Indian trade. The passage of newcomers led to polluted water holes, decimated cottonwood groves, and declining bison. Trade was doomed by a cholera epidemic and escalating tensions between the local Indigenous and whites.

After Charles died in 1847, St. Vrain tried to sell the fort to the US Army. William Bent may have tried to sell the fort in 1849 before moving his trading houses 40 miles downriver to Big Timbers. He built Bent’s New Fort there in 1853.

What you see today is a reconstruction of Bent’s Old Fort, built with similar materials and furnished mostly with reproductions. Researchers relied on historic descriptions, detailed drawings, and archeological findings to ensure the appearance is close to that of the original.

Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site is one of more than 400 parks in the National Park System.

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