Old fort, old border

From the porch of St. Vrain's quarters

Too often in Colorado, the plains covering the state's eastern third get the short shrift. The land is flat but the mountains never really fall behind. The view to the west covers the Spanish Peaks, the Sangre de Cristo range and Pikes Peak. Heading east from Pueblo, the Arkansas River provides constant company as a series of small farming towns, notable Rocky Ford and its famous melons. Maybe it feels the same as Kansas to some, but not me, at least not this soon. 

East of La Junta, there sits a curious squat adobe building sits on the river’s north bank. In the 1830s, the northern bank marked the southern border of the U.S. in Colorado. The original Bent’s Old Fort is long gone, but the restored fort echoes the walls and rooms of the original thanks to a serendipitous survey conducted by an off-duty Army officer.

Bent’s Old Fort was one of the first permanent Western trading posts in the Louisiana Purchase territory, operating by a trading company formed by French immigrant Ceran St. Vrain and brothers Charles and William Bent. Its founders picked a location that drew Mexicans, travelers, trappers several Indian tribes (mainly Cheyenne and Arapaho), settlers and hunters. Bison robes were among the chief items traded by Indians.

Unlike many park units, no one get to drive right up to the fort doors. To preserve how visitors would have approached the fort during its active years, everyone must walk a quarter-mile up the fort path to enter.

Bent’s Old Fort could seem any garden variety tourist stop, but the exact reconstruction gives the adobe walls a feel of history not touched often enough. The fort’s rooms have been decorated as they would have been during the fort’s brief heyday. The fort was a center of trading and the only while settlement on the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and Mexican posts. At that time the river’s function was an international border did not have the same severity as it would today, as those with goods crossed easily.

The front of the fort included a meeting room and a trading room for use of the Cheyenne Indians. Considered friendly to the fort because William Bent married a Cheyenne woman, the tribe was granted trading privileges not allowed other tribes. Tribes not considered allies or adversaries with the Cheyenne still traded by Bent’s Old Fort, but were restricted to trades at a window near the fort entrance.

The Cheyenne respected William Bent for his marital ties and straightforwardness in dealing with them. The fort also avoided selling alcohol to Indians, preferring to trade supplies for bison robes the tribes could provide.

My favorite Mouser, Fitz

In the restored trading room, a cat lounged on a buffalo robe next to a stack of Mexican blankets, the warmest spot in the room on a frigid sunny morning. The mouser stayed long enough for a picture then ran into the main yard belly swinging the whole way. The prevalence of buffalo robes in most rooms – they covered the floor in the meeting room - indicated living at this isolated post probably wasn’t as cold as it felt to visit in 2019.

A kitchen for top staff and guests, a metal shop, a gunpowder magazine and a cellar with a pump finished out the ground level. Reenactors dressed in period outfit and like many national historic sites, provide demonstrations throughout the year.

The upper level included the doctor’s quarters (and infirmary), soldiers’ quarters and an apartment for St. Vrain, which was used for visiting travelers when he was away. His second-story hut provides full views of the fort, the plains surrounding it and the Arkansas to the south. For a small fort, it was a sturdy structure and never subject to attack before its abandonment in 1849 during a cholera epidemic. Decline in bison robe supply also hurt the fort’s prospects. It served as a staging area for wagon trains heading south during the Mexican-American War.

My favorite favorite mouser

The post created a thriving community that brought traders across hundreds of miles, as unlikely as southeastern Colorado seems as a destination today. The Cheyenne would perform ceremonial dances in the large courtyard.

The Bents and St. Vrain did their homework at the time when plotting out where a trading post could succeed. After the fort tour, I decided to take the nature trail that winds through cottonwood groves and dense wetlands along the Arkansas. If Colorado were ever to receive a border wall, the Arkansas would have been the logical place - 190 years ago.


I met the fort’s other mouser before I started the walk. This cat, leaner than the one in the trading room, did not seem inclined to let me continue without minutes of pets and scratches. Ponds formed within the wetlands, and several species of waterfowl dove for food. A few clicks of my camera and they rose in flocks that disappeared into the dense thatch of plants circled by the trail.

Despite the flatness of the Arkansas floodplain, the recreation of Bent’s Old Fort quickly slipped away. Almost two centuries later, the highways and railroads can take away from the risks and challenges these men took in building this remote outpost. 

Buffalo hide recording events of 1833

Graveyard along the fort entrance path