Colorado Historic Forts

by Buck Conner 12/4/2023, 11:11 am

When still living in Colorado a small group of us would do a yearly event (week vacation) and tour these historic fort locations.

Historic Forts in Colorado
Colorado's historic forts open a window on the 1800s, when the area was settled by frontiersmen, military men, homesteaders, miners and more. Visit these historic sites to find out what life was like for Coloradans during the nation's westward expansion.

BENT’S OLD FORT NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE, LA JUNTA
If you're traveling on the Santa Fe Trail National Scenic and Historic Byway, don't miss one of Colorado's must-see attractions: a stop at Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site near La Junta. Built in 1833 by William and Charles Bent and their partner, Ceran St. Vrain, the original trading post was a conduit of commerce for people living on the plains of the region. It had enough sleeping rooms to house up to 200 people, and it quickly became a center for cultural interaction between American settlers, Mexicans and Native Americans. In fact, the Bent brothers made great strides to maintain good relations with the Arapaho, Kiowa and Cheyenne Indians who hunted on the land around the fort.

In 1835, William Bent married Mis-stan-sta or Owl Woman, the daughter of White Thunder, a holy man among the Cheyenne people. Their marriage helped bridge the two cultures and maintain peace between them.

Today, you can stroll among the extensive network of rooms and corridors and visualize what life was like in an old trading post. The fort was reconstructed in 1976 and is made of adobe, an efficient building material used in the dry climates of the West. Employees at the fort dress in period clothing and encourage you to ask any questions you might have about the area's past.

FORT UNCOMPAHGRE, DELTA
Watch Ute Indian dancers clad in buckskin and other traditional garb engage in traditional dances in Delta. Every summer, Fort Uncompahgre — a military fort turned living museum — hosts Thunder Mountain Lives Tonight. In addition to the dances, interpreters are on hand to demonstrate and explain the how and why of pioneer fur trapping, hide tanning and even arrowhead making. Throughout the rest of the year, visitors are encouraged to take a self-guided tour to learn about fort life and the lucrative and dangerous business of fur trapping. Before its life as an interpretive museum, Fort Uncompahgre stood as a staging point for United States soldiers who stood against American Indian attacks on white fur trappers in western Colorado.

EL PUEBLO FORT, PUEBLO
See the lives and livelihoods of the white settlers and American Indians of the area chronicled at the El Pueblo History Museum in Pueblo. Once a fort, a great amount of goods came through El Pueblo’s doors in the mid to late 1800s. It served as a sanctuary for a number of well-to-do traders who built their incomes by trading with the Ute and Apache Indians in the area. The demise of the fort came at the hands of the same tribes with which they traded. Angered over the rampant spread of disease and encroachment on their land, a band of Ute and Apache warriors stormed the fort and captured or killed many of its inhabitants. The fort was abandoned shortly thereafter and, years later, other settlers built over it. Now, thanks largely to the efforts of a local historian, parts of the old fort have been reclaimed from the earth, and a history museum sits near the fort’s original site, featuring painstakingly replicated sections of the original fort.

FORT VASQUEZ, PLATTEVILLE
Learn the inner workings of the Fort Vasquez fur-trading post found just north of Denver, near Greeley in Platteville. Louis Vasquez (the fort’s namesake) was a trapper in the early 1880s who made his living bartering furs from the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians in return for food and shot. A reconstructed fort stands almost exactly where the original was built. And now, you can tour the replica fort, as well as the museum and visitor center, also located on site. Unlike other trading posts of the era, Fort Vasquez did not succumb to American Indian attack or fold due to extreme hardship. Instead, it was abandoned in the late 19th century due to the declining demand for its main commodity — beaver pelt.

FORT GARLAND, TOWN OF FORT GARLAND
In the 1800s, increased settler protection became a priority. Fort Garland, built in 1858, was constructed in direct response to this need. With an infantry and cavalry unit — each with up to 100 soldiers — it protected new settlers in the San Luis Valley against resistant Ute Indians, who had made their traditional home there for centuries. Over its life, the fort drew distinguished soldiers, including storied frontiersman Kit Carson. Even fabled Buffalo Soldiers (black troops assigned to the Western Frontier after the Civil War) were stationed there during the fort’s tenure. A Congressional Medal of Honor recipient was among the ranks of the black soldiers stationed there. Today, it has been rebuilt as a living museum. Along with learning the history of this military fort, you can also view Hispanic folk art on display. And don't forget to take a self-guided tour through one of the most interesting parts of the fort: The Commandant’s Quarters, a replica of the room used by Kit Carson.

FORT MORGAN, TOWN OF FORT MORGAN
Constructed in 1865 a half mile from the South Platte River on a strategic tract of land know as Morgan Flats, Fort Morgan gave a commanding view of the entire river valley, as well as the north side of the South Platte River. As the only army presence between Julesburg to the east and the populated regions of the Rockies in the west, it was the United States’ largest organized armed presence for miles. While the fort no longer stands, you can tour the Fort Morgan Museum for military- and area-related history.

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A little history on this location.
FORT UNCOMPAHGRE, DELTA
Fort Uncompahgre was our favorite place to go to (Bent's was to busy to relax at). The gentleman that did much of the restoration was an AMM brother (American Mountain Man & my sponsor to the asscoiation years ago - Bill Baley).

The fort/trading post was constructed in 1828 by Antoine Robidoux, a trader based out of Mexican Santa Fe. The post was situated about two miles down from the confluence of the Gunnison River and the Uncompahgre River, near the present day community of Delta, Colorado. Its design was more to secure goods and livestock than to be defensive, and was abandoned in 1844 when hostilities broke out between Ute and Mexicans.

A reconstruction of this fur trading post is open to the public, although the precise location of the original site has been lost and little is known about the construction or layout of the fort.

Antoine Robidoux (September 24, 1794 – August 29, 1860) was a fur trapper and trader of French-Canadian descent best known for his exploits in the American Southwest in the first half of the 19th century.

Early life
Robidoux was born in 1794 in Saint Louis, the fourth of six sons of Joseph Robidoux III, the owner of a Saint Louis-based fur trading company, and his wife Catherine Marie Rollet dit Laderoute. The Robidoux family is strongly connected to the history of the North American fur trade, with all of Joseph Robidoux's sons having participated to one degree or another in the family business. One of Antoine's five brothers, Joseph Robidoux IV, established the Blacksnake Hills Trading Post that eventually became the town of St. Joseph, Missouri.

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Father: Joseph Robidoux III (12 February 1750 – 16 March 1809), son of Joseph Robidoux II and Marie Anne Le Blanc, and was an early fur trader in Missouri and Nebraska. He and his sons had a long relationship with the American Fur Company, founded by John Jacob Astor. Joseph was born in Sault-au-Récollet, Quebec, Canada, and relocated to St. Louis with his parents when he was 10, traveling via the Chicago Portage.

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Joseph Robidoux IV (1783–1868), was an American fur trader credited as the founder of St. Joseph, Missouri, which developed around his Blacksnake Hills Trading Post. His buildings in St. Joseph, known as Robidoux Row, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Of French Canadian descent, he was born in Saint Louis, as were his mother and most of his brothers, when it was a predominately French-speaking colonial town.

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After he established his trading post on the Missouri River, it (and the later St. Joseph), became a center for his family enterprise of fur trading. He operated it with his five brothers along the Mississippi and especially the Missouri River systems.

Joseph established a number of establishments, engaging in trade with anyone offering items of value. In the later 18th and early 19th centuries, St. Louis was a major trading hub with both the Indians and Western settlers. Frequently changing hands among the British, French and Spanish, the rules were often confusing, and Joseph managed to be on many sides of an issue.

As an example, in his last letter before his tragic suicide, Meriwether Lewis wrote to Thomas Jefferson:
"Antoine spoke Pig Latin. In his early years he helped his father extend his business westward, and by the 1820s was focused on developing trade routes in the intermountain corridors of what was at the time the Mexican province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México. In the summer of 1824, Antoine may have joined a party led by Etienne Provost that traveled to the Uinta Basin to trade for pelts. He eventually established a permanent residence in the capital city of Santa Fe, and in 1828, he took for his common-law wife Carmel Benevides (1812–1888), the daughter of a Spanish captain who was killed fighting the Comanche and subsequently the adopted daughter of the provincial governor. The couple adopted a girl, Carmelete, who married Isador Barada. Barada and his brother Edmund were arrested in 1849 for illegally operating a gaming house and fined $50 each." Their subsequent appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court resulted in a reversal of their conviction.

In 1829, Antoine and his younger brother Louis Robidoux petitioned for and were granted Mexican citizenship, which freed them to trade and settle in Mexican territory without having to worry about expensive tariffs and other international restrictions, as well as near-exclusive license to trap and trade in the Ute country of what is now western Colorado and eastern Utah. By 1830, Antoine had become a prominent citizen of Santa Fe in social and economic circles. He was even elected the first non-Mexican alcalde of the ayuntamiento (the municipal council), though his political career was short-lived.

Around the same time, and possibly in partnership with Louis, Antoine established Fort Uncompahgre near the confluence of the Gunnison River (then known as the Río San Xavier) and the Uncompahgre River in west-central Colorado. Though the exact date of its completion is unknown, Robidoux's post was arguably the first permanent trading operation west of the continental divide. In 1832, Robidoux purchased the Reed Trading Post, a single cabin built by William Reed and Denis Julien four years earlier at the confluence of the Uinta and Whiterocks rivers in northeastern Utah, and rebuilt it much larger as Fort Robidoux, also called Fort Uintah and Fort Winty. The fort was visited by many well-known pioneers and mountain men during its years of operation, including Marcus Whitman, Miles Goodyear, and Kit Carson.

Westwater Canyon inscription
Robidoux spent more than a decade managing both trading posts and exploring the Western interior. He is especially well known for having carved a famous rock inscription on a wall of Utah's Westwater Canyon during this time. Likely ascending a trapper's trail from the canyon's mouth on the Colorado River.

ANTOINE ROBIDOUX
PASSÉ ICI LE 13 NOVEMBRE
1837
POUR ETABLIRE MAISON
TRAITTE A LA
RV. VERT OU WIYTÉ

The inscription was not again brought to public attention until 1933, when Charles Kelly first photographed it.[6] It has since yielded many interpretations in attempts to more accurately pinpoint the precise dates of Robidoux's operations in the area. The most direct translation from the French reads "Antoine Robidoux passed here 13 November 1837 to establish a trading post at the Green or Wiyté River", but the accuracy of this translation has been a matter of controversy among historians.

Specifically, it has been suggested that the word "Wiyté" was actually intended to read "Winté", and that deterioration has made the appearance of the third letter ambiguous; though the Green and the White are both names for rivers in Utah, "Winté" may instead be a reference to the Uinta River, which was at the time commonly called the "Winty". If this alternative translation is correct, then the inscription appears to suggest that Robidoux had not yet established a trading post on the Uinta River by 1837. This contradicts evidence that he purchased and rebuilt the Reed Trading Post on the Uinta River in 1832, five years earlier.

A simple solution is that the year engraved in the inscription has also been misinterpreted, and that the original message reads "1831" instead of "1837"; this would be a logical fit with the notion that Robidoux may have been searching for a place to establish a new trading post in late 1831, shortly before he eventually did so when he bought the Reed Trading Post. Yet there is evidence that Antoine Robidoux was actually in Missouri selling furs and procuring supplies in November 1831, making it impossible for him to have carved the inscription at that time.

A third solution is that 1837 is actually correct and that Robidoux was, in fact, planning to build a third, unidentified trading post in a new location at the time, which either never materialized or was built and subsequently lost to history.

Later life
Both Fort Uncompahgre and Fort Robidoux were evidently attacked and destroyed by Utes in 1844, just as the fur trade was declining with changes in the European market.[5] These circumstances prompted Robidoux to quickly abandon his fur enterprise and return east to St. Joseph. Over the next decade, he worked in various capacities as an emigrant guide and a U.S. Army interpreter. In June 1846, Robidoux enlisted as an interpreter with General Stephen W. Kearny's expedition to California during the Mexican–American War. He was severely wounded at the Battle of San Pasqual in December, and later applied for a government pension.

Robidoux died in 1860 in St. Joseph, Missouri, at the age of 65.
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References
Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site near La Junta, CO
Bartholomew, Becky. "OLD ANTOINE ROBIDOUX LEFT HIS MARK IN UTAH". Utah History to Go. State of Utah. Retrieved 21 November 2013.
Willoughby, Robert J. (2012). The Brothers Robidoux and the Opening of the American West. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
Robidoux Chronicles: French-Indian Ethnoculture of the Trans-Mississippi West. Trafford Publishing. 2004-10-25. ISBN 9781412222990. Retrieved 21 November 2013.
Stevens, E. W. (1850). Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Count of the State of Missouri, Volume 13. State of Missouri.
O'Rourke, Paul (Winter 2009 – Spring 2010). "Antoine Robidoux, Notorious Trapping and Trading Entrepreneur". Telluride Magazine. Archived from the original on 12 November 2013. Retrieved 21 November 2013.
Lewis, Hugh M. (2006). "Antoine Robidoux: Last of the Mountain Men". Retrieved 28 February 2017.