Bent's Old Fort
by Jon Burch Photography
Title
Bent's Old Fort
Artist
Jon Burch Photography
Medium
Photograph - Digital Capture/faa Watermark Will Not Be On Your Finished Photograph.
Description
Built in 1833, Bent's Old Fort is located in Otero County in southeastern Colorado. William and Charles Bent 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 white American permanent settlement on the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and the Mexican settlements.
The adobe fort quickly became the center of the Bent, St. Vrain Company's expanding trade empire, which included Fort Saint 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. It was the only permanent settlement not under the jurisdiction and control of Native Americans or Mexicans. The U.S. Army, explorers, and other travelers stopped at the fort to replenish supplies, such as water and food, and perform needed maintenance to their wagons. The American frontiersman Kit Carson was employed as a hunter by the Bent brothers in 1841, and regularly visited the Fort. The explorer John C. Fremont also used the Fort as both a staging area and a 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".
In 1849 when a great cholera epidemic struck the Oklahoma and other plains Indians, William Bent abandoned Bent's Fort and moved his headquarters north to Fort Saint Vrain on the South Platte river. When he returned south in 1852, after salvaging what he could, he burned the fort and relocated his trading business to his log trading post at Big Timbers, near what is now Lamar, Colorado. Later, in the fall of 1853, Bent began building a stone fort on the bluff above Big Timbers, Bent's New Fort, where he conducted his trading business until 1860 when the building was leased to the United States government and renamed Fort Wise. It was there that the Treaty of Fort Wise was signed on February 18, 1861 by the United States and a few Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs. Old Fort Lyon, as Fort Wise was renamed in 1862, was built of timber by army troops in 1860 about half a mile west in the Arkansas River bottom. It was abandoned and replaced by new Fort Lyon near what is now Las Animas, Colorado in 1867.
Some digital effects were applied to this original image after the photograph was made. No electrons were harmed during the transition. Ordered images will not contain the FAA watermark.
Image copyright 2016 Jon Burch Photography all rights reserved.
Uploaded
December 24th, 2016
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