Bent's Fort

Bent's Old Fort
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
U.S. National Historic Site
Bent's Old Fort
Location:	Otero County, Colorado, USA
Nearest city:	La Junta, Colorado
Coordinates:	38°02′34″N 103°25′45″W / 38.04278°N 103.42917°W / 38.04278; -103.42917Coordinates: 38°02′34″N 103°25′45″W / 38.04278°N 103.42917°W / 38.04278; -103.42917
Area:	799 acres (3.23 km2)
Built/Founded:	1833
Architect:	William Bent; Charles Bent
Visitation:	23,952 (2007)
Governing body:	National Park Service
Added to NRHP:	October 15, 1966 [1]
Designated NHL:	June 3, 1960
Designated NHS:	December 19, 1960 [2]
NRHP Reference#:	66000254

Bent's Old Fort is an 1833 fort located in Otero County, Colorado, USA. William and Charles Bent, along with Ceran St. Vrain, built the fort to trade with Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Plains Indians and trappers for buffalo robes. For much of its 16-year history, the fort was the only major permanent white settlement on the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and the Mexican settlements. It was destroyed under mysterious circumstances in 1849.

The area of the fort was designated a National Historic Site under the National Park Service on June 3, 1960. It was further designated a National Historic Landmark later that year on December 19, 1960.^[2][3][4] The fort was reconstructed and is open to the public.

History

The adobe fort quickly became the center of the Bent, St. Vrain Company's expanding trade empire that included Fort St. Vrain to the north and Fort Adobe to the south, along with company stores in New Mexico at Taos and Santa Fe. The primary trade was with the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians for buffalo robes.

From 1833 to 1849, the fort was a stopping point along the Santa Fe Trail and was the only permanent settlement not under the jurisdiction and control of the Native Americans or the Mexicans. The U.S. Army, explorers and other travelers would replenish supplies such as water and food, and any maintenance needed to their wagons occurred at the fort. The American frontiersman Kit Carson was employed as a hunter by the Bent brothers in 1841, and regularly visited the Fort.^[5] Likewise, the explorer John C. Frémont used the Fort as both a staging area, and as a replenishment junction, for his expeditions.^[6] During the Mexican-American War in 1846, the fort became a staging area for Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny's "Army of the West".^[7]

Destruction

For much of the 20th century there have been two main opposing theories for the 1849 destruction of the Fort. In his book Colorado (1889), George Bancroft attributes the Fort's demise to an attack by local indigenous tribes; "Bent's fort was also captured subsequently and the inmates slaughtered". This theory has since been largely discounted.^{[citation needed]} Historians now lean towards the explanation that William Bent himself attempted to sell the Fort to the U.S. Army and, when he failed to extract a sum he felt the sale warranted he mined the fort with gunpowder and explosive charges and "blew it to pieces" on August 21, 1849. Certainly eye-witnesses who saw the fort after its abandonment tend to describe damage and destruction as being greater than would have been the case had the Fort simply fallen prey to abandonment and neglect.^{[citation needed]}

When the fort was reconstructed in 1976, materials used to maintain the authenticity of the project included archaeological excavations, paintings and original sketches, diaries and other existing historical data from the period.

In popular culture

• Bent's Fort appears briefly in Larry McMurty's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove, as well as in the 1989 Emmy Award-winning four-part TV miniseries adapted from the book. In both the book and the miniseries, the character Elmira Johnson (played in the miniseries by Glenne Headly) visits the Fort while she is pregnant, and in the company of two buffalo hunters.
• In George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman novel - Flashman and the Redskins - Flashman the 'fictional' anti-hero is present at the destruction of Bents' Fort. According to the novel, the fort is "blown to pieces" during an attack by Ute and Chief Dog Kiowa raiders by detonation of the mines set by Bent to destroy the fort but which had failed to explode.
• The fort was the setting of the early episodes of the CBS western miniseries The Chisholms (1979-1980), starring Robert Preston, Rosemary Harris, and Ben Murphy.

See also

• First Battle of Adobe Walls

Further reading

• Lavender, David (1954). Bent's Fort. Garden City, N.Y.: University of Nebraska Press. OCLC 26332056. ; reprinted in 1972 by University of Nebraska Press, ISBN 0-8032-5753-8
• Blassingame, Wyatt (1967). Bent's Fort, Crossroads of the Great West. Champaign, Ill.: Garrard Pub. Co.. p. 96 p.. OCLC 887106. ; for juvenile audience
• Magoffin, Susan (1982). Down the Santa Fe Trail and Into Mexico. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 9780803281165. 
• Legg, John (1993). War at Bent's Fort, historical novel. Siegel & Sigel Ltd.. ISBN 0-312-95053-5. 

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site

• National Park Service: Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site
• Photos of Bents Fort provided by Rocky mountain Profiles
• Architectural drawings and documentation at Historic American Buildings Survey

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