White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1931-08-06

The Bent brothers and Ceran st. Vrain began
trading on the Upper Arkansas in the early
twenties The famous adobe fort at first called
Fort William, was begun in 1928 and completed
in 1892 The Enclosure was $50 feet by 1876 feet.
The walls were four feet thick and fifteen feet
high. Bastions thirty feet high rose from two
corners and were provided with loopholes for
musketry and cannon. Fort Bent was for twenty
years the most important trading post on the
frontier and to name all the men who were
nected with it-FremOnt, Kit Carson, Dick Woo
ton and a host Of others-is to call the roll of
all the outstanding men in the earliest Wild
West
What Bents fort was to the Santa Fee Trail,
Fort Laramie was to that other famous trans
continental highway, the Oregon Trail. So it is
especially appropriate that movement should
now be under way in Wyoming for the pur.
chase of old Fort Laramie from it's present
owners tit forms part of cattle ranch) and
convert it into state monument. The last
legislature appropriated $4,000 for this pur.
pose and Fort Laramie may soon be restored
to some of its former glory.
The history of Fort Laramie goes back to
1888 when Robert Campbell and William Sub.
lette, trappers and fur traders, established a
camp on the North Platte river a few miles
west of what is now the state line of Wyoming
Here were erected a few cabins and this from
tier outpost was first named Fort William, then
Fort John and finally named Fort Laramie after
Jacques La Ranie, a French Canadian trapper
whose exploits made him noted figure in that
region
From the beginning the fort did prosperous
business in pelts and furs, trading principally
with the Ogalalla bands of the Sioux the Chey.
ennes and the Arapahoes. In 1885 it became the
property of the Rocky Mountain Fur company.
composed of Milton Sublette, Thomas Fitzpat.
rick, Jim Bridger, Henry Fraeb and John Bap-
tiste Gervais.
Later in the same year the post passed into
the hands of Lucien Fontanelle for the Ameri-
can Fur company, which had been founded sew
eral years earlier by John Jacob Astor. Bust.
ness was so good that the American Fur COM
pany felt justified in spending $4,000 on i'm
provements These included enargements, i'm
proved Notifications and increased facilities for
handling furs and trading with emigrants and
trappers.
The American Fur company sold Fort Lara
ME to the government in 1S49 and for many
years under national control it served as prin
cipal depot for emigrants and base of opera
lions against Indians. 1t was rebuilt and en-
arged, and sundried brick was used in strength
ening the Notifications. Walls 20 feet high and
feet thick were built around it, enclosing a
space 25O feet long by 200 feet wide. Within
this enclosure there were more than a dozen
buildings chucked squarely against the walls
Fort Laramie played stirring part In the
Indian wars of the sixties and seventies and
was finally abandoned as military reservation
in 1890. 1t then passed into private hands and
has had three different owners. Some of its
buildings have been remodeled and put to vari-
Gus uses. but others have crumbled into the
dust of oblivion from which 1t is now proposed
to restore this historic outpost.
q by Western Newspaper UnionS