Places To Go

The many rooms within the 1976 reconstructed fort have been furnished to interpret a slice of Bent's Fort history when the company's trade network was at its height. Over the course of the trading post's lifespan and into its use as a military staging point, postal stop, and a stagecoach station, rooms within the fort and its attached spaces have changed and expanded many times to accommodate the varying needs of its function.

While the original 1833 fort structure holds an important place in the history of trade in the Borderlands during the nineteenth century, it is worth noting that the fort's location was and its memory continues to be completely supported by the landscape and rich ecology around it. The shortgrass prairie, cottonwood tree groves, Arkansas River, and Santa Fe Trail all provided the means by which the Bent, St. Vrain and Company's trade goods could be secured and ushered to lucrative markets abroad.