Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site

National Historic Site. A Full Scale Reconstruction, On Its Original Foundations, Of The Adobe Fur Trading Post Built In 1833 For Sixteen Years The Only Substantial Settlement On The Santa Fe Trail Between Missouri And The Mexican Settlements, And Neutral Ground Between The Plains Tribes And The Traders. · La Junta, Colorado

For sixteen years in the middle of the nineteenth century, an adobe castle stood alone on the Arkansas River and everything that crossed the southern plains stopped at it. Bent's Fort was built in 1833 by the brothers William and Charles Bent with Ceran St. Vrain, and it was the only substantial settlement on the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and Mexican territory - a trading post, not a military garrison, and deliberately neutral ground where Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute, Comanche, trappers, traders and the US Army all did business without fighting. William Bent married Owl Woman, the daughter of the Cheyenne keeper of the sacred arrows, which is why it worked. In 1849, with cholera through the plains and the trade collapsing, the fort was abandoned and burned. What stands today was rebuilt in 1976 on the original foundations from archaeology, army sketches and traders' diaries, and is staffed in period.

35110 Highway 194 East, La Junta, Colorado, 81050, United States

Open daily year-round during daytime hours, with longer summer hours, closing on major winter holidays. Costumed interpreters are on site most days in the main season and less reliably in winter, and special living-history weekends run through the year - these are what turn a good visit into a memorable one, so it is worth timing. An entrance fee applies and interagency passes are accepted. The quarter-mile path from the car park to the fort is the only way in; a shuttle runs for those who need it.

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