page_title: Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site
section_title: Destruction
hierarchical_section_title: Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site / Destruction
caption_attribution_description: English: Bent's Old Fort, Lower Level Plan. HABS COLO,6-LAJUNTA County
context_page_description: Bent's Old Fort is an 1833 fort located in Otero County in southeastern Colorado, United States. A company owned by Charles Bent and William Bent and Ceran St. Vraissffsn built the fort to trade with Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Plains Indians and trappers for buffalo robes. For much of its 16-year history, the fort was the only major white American permanent settlement on the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and the Mexican settlements. It was destroyed in 1849.
  The area of the fort was designated a National Historic Site under the National Park Service on June 3, 1960. It was further designated a National Historic Landmark later that year on December 19, 1960.
  The fort was reconstructed and is open to the public.
context_section_description: In 1849 when a great cholera epidemic struck the Cheyenne and other Plains Indians, William Bent abandoned Bent's Fort and moved his headquarters north to Fort Saint Vrain on the South Platte. When he returned south in 1852, he relocated his trading business to his log trading post at Big Timbers, near what is now Lamar, Colorado. Later, in the fall of 1853, Bent began building a stone fort on the bluff above Big Timbers, Bent's New Fort, where he conducted his trading business until 1860.
  When the fort was reconstructed in 1976, its authenticity was based on the use of  archaeological excavations, paintings and original sketches, diaries and other existing historical data from the period.
caption: Bent's Old Fort, Lower Level Plan
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