SFGT: Bent's Old Fort

This cache has been placed in cooperation with the staff at Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site. There is plenty of space to pull-off from road for parking; easily accessible; should be fairly easy to find. Try to allow time to visit this site -- it is one of the best along the Trail. The living history programs are outstanding.

This cache is part of the larger Santa Fe Trail GeoTour. Be sure to visit www.santafetrail.org/geocaching to learn about the PASSPORT ACTIVITY to accompany this Geo Tour.

Containers on the Santa Fe National Historic Trail Geo Tour are military ammunition canisters, or Brochure-Holder boxes, with an identifying Santa Fe Trail Association yellow sticker on the top of the box, under the handle and the dark green geocaching.com ID is on the side of the boxes with the information that provides coordinates, who set the cache and who to contact for information. Each cache contains a logbook to sign, a variety of items that provide information about the Santa Fe Trail as well as swag items. If you are participating in the Passport activity, the code word is located on the inside of the box, on the top of the lid and is clearly identified as Code Word. Permission to set caches has been obtained. We ask that all cachers please respect all property at the sites where our caches are set.

Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site is north of the Arkansas River, 8 miles east of La Junta on Colorado 194. The fort was an active trading post from 1833 to 1849, and it was of national importance to the opening of the American West. This fort has been faithfully reconstructed and is open to the public.  It is a National Historic Landmark.

William and Charles Bent, along with Ceran St. Vrain, built the original fort on this site in 1833 to trade with trappers and Native Americans, primarily the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, for buffalo robes. 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 Mexico at Taos and Santa Fe.

For much of its 16-year history, the adobe fort was the only major permanent white settlement on the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and the Mexican settlements around Santa Fe. The fort provided explorers, adventurers, and the U.S. Army a place to get needed supplies, wagon repairs, livestock, good food, water, camaraderie, rest and protection in the vast "Great American Desert". The famous Western scout Kit Carson was a hunter for the fort from 1831 to 1842. During the war with Mexico in 1846, the fort became a staging area for Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny's "Army of the West". Disasters and disease caused the fort's abandonment in 1849. Archeological excavations and original sketches, paintings and diaries were used in the fort's reconstruction in 1976.

Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site features a reconstructed 1840s adobe fur trading post on the mountain branch of the Santa Fe Trail where traders, trappers, travelers, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes came together in peaceful terms for trade. Today, living historians recreate the sights, sounds, and smells of the past with guided tours, demonstrations and special events.

For more information, visit: http://www.nps.gov/beol/index.htm