For Teachers

Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site highlights the crucial interaction of Native American, Mexican, and American settlers along the borderlands of Mexico and the United States beginning in the 1830s. Security, sovereignty, and culture among those living in the Borderlands during the era rose in proportion to group participation in trade. While seemingly isolated and remote, this trading post on the Santa Fe Trail connected a variety of people to each other and to the commercial routes that extended past American terrorities to global markets south and east. Trusted partnerships, the exchange of skills, and familial kinship ties characterized success on these southern plains.

Students who visit Bent's Old Fort gain access to a three-dimensional historical and cultural perspective on Colorado's early history in the era of westward expansion. Economic and ecological factors that determined the territory's destiny can still be read on the landscape today. Enjoy experiencing the southern plains where the once-plentiful buffalo defined a people and a commercial empire.

Please help yourself to the Bent's Old Fort units and lesson plans which are aligned to Colorado standards to ground your students in the context that makes this place so special. Learn more about bringing a class field trip to the fort.