History Colorado

Explore the most important settlement in Colorado during the mid 1800s!

Explore the Fort

Draw the 4 main trade routes on the map: Santa Fe Trail, American Indian Trade Networks, El Camino Real, Overseas Routes

Draw the Trade Routes!

Starting in the 1600s, furs and hides were traded among American Indians, Canadians, Spaniards, and English, French and Russian traders. Follow the history of the fur trade in Colorado from 1600 to 1850!

Fur Trade in Colorado Timeline

Goods from all over the world made their way to Bent's Fort long before highways, railroads, cars, and airplanes. You could find tea from China, glass beads from Italy and France, sugar from Mexico, or Hudson Bay blankets from Canada. How did all of these fabulous goods make their way to an adobe fort on the arid plains, 600 miles from the United States?

1848 Trade Routes

Mountain men camped and trapped alone in the mountains throughout the winter, so they carried everything they needed with them to get them through to the following spring. They did most of their hunting during the winter, because beaver furs were thickest. Here are some of the important supplies that mountain men used in order to survive. Image: Gear spread

Mountain Man Gear

They wandered the uncharted Rocky Mountains, they went in harm’s way, and they captured the imagination of Americans, then and now. But the mountain men were neither so free nor so independent as their legend insists. They toiled at the end of a long economic chain that stretched from the icy beaver ponds of the Rockies to the uncertain fashion markets of New York and London. Then in the 1840s, the supply of beaver ran out, and hat fashion changed from fur to silk. Suddenly, the day of the mountain men was done. Kit Carson became a guide, Jim Baker a rancher, and Thomas Fitzpatrick an Indian agent. Others were unable to fit in, forever of the move, always on the fringe of society, misfits to the end.

Famous Mountain Men

Between 1833 and 1849, weary Santa Fe Trail travelers cheered when they saw Bent's Fort - a marketplace like no other. Before Colorado was even a state, Bent's Fort was a hub of activity and a place where goods from around the world could be traded for or purchased.

Bent’s Fort: Colorado’s First Trade Center

The United States looked very different in the early 1800s. Much of what we now know as the United States of America were territories that belonged to other countries. Here are some maps of what Colorado and the surrounding territories looked like at the time. Can you imagine what it would be like to explore these areas as a trader? What are three things that are different about these maps compared to the maps we see today?

Historic Maps of the Colorado Territory

During the Great Depression, History Colorado hired unemployed artists through the Works Progress Administration to do many tasks, including create dioramas. These images are from the Winter Camp, Summer Rendezvous, and River Trading dioramas created between 1934 and 1941.

Trapping and Trading: A Diorama

During the era of the mountain men, people of many different cultures came together to trade furs, goods, and information. How did people live during this period of time? What role did Bent’s Fort play in international trade? How did beliefs and prejudices affect how people were treated and cultural relations? Explore this brief, but important, era in our history!

Location! Location! On the Santa Fe Trail at Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site

Location! Location! On the Santa Fe National Historic trail at Pecos National Historic Park

Educator’s Guide to Bent’s Fort- International Trade during the Fur Trade Era

Bent’s Fort Teacher Resource Guide-Secondary 

Fur Trade-Trappers and Traders Activity Sheet

History Colorado: Bent’s Fort Trade Game

Class Develops Book about Bent’s Fort for a Younger Grade

Bent's Fort and the Fur Trade

Civics and Government

Social Studies

Economics

Geography

U.S. History

Beginning with the founding of Quebec, Canada, American Indian tribes throughout North America collect furs and hides, and exchange them for manufactured goods supplied by Spanish, English, French, and Russian traders.

American Indian Trading

Returning from their journey to the Pacific Ocean, explorers Lewis and Clark meet trappers heading west. American fur trade era in the Rocky Mountain West begins.

Lewid and Clark

First large group of fur trappers comes to the upper Arkansas River in what is present-day Colorado.

Fur Trappers

William Ashley advertises for “enterprising young men” to join his fur trapping company.


William Ashley

Battle between trappers and Arikara Indians halts trade along the Missouri River, inspires overland travel to the West and seasonal trade camps called “rendezvous,” where groups of mountain men, American Indians, and traders come together to exchange goods.

Rendezvous

Rocky Mountain Fur Company’s first rendezvous.

Rocky Mountain Fur Company

Smith, Jackson, and Sublette sell Rocky Mountain Fur Company to Thomas Fitzpatrick, Jim Bridger, Milton Sublette, Henry Fraeb, and Jean Baptiste Gervais. Williams Sublette takes first supply wagons to the mountains, blazing a trail across the continental Divide later used by thousands of emigrants to Oregon and California.


A New Trail

Comanche warriors resist American expansion into their trading empire by killing legendary mountain man Jedediah Smith on the Cimarron Cutoff of the Santa Fe Trail.


Comanche Warriors

Bent’s Fort constructed along the Arkansas River in Southeast Colorado near a popular American Indian trading center known as the Big Timbers.

Bent's Fort

Fort Vasquez established on the South Platte River, near the present-day town of Platteville, by Andrew Sublette and Louis Vasquez.

Fort Vasquez

Fort Lupton established on the South Platte, near the present-day town of Fort Lupton, by Lancaster P. Lupton.

Fort Lupton

Fort St. Vrain established on the South Platte by William Bent and Ceran St. Vrain, just Northwest of present-day Platteville.

Fort St. Vrain

Overtrapping and shifting fashion tasted from beaver fur hats to silk mark the quick collapse of the Rocky Mountain fur trade.

The Collapse

El Pueblo established on the Arkansas River (present-day Pueblo). Mountain men Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez establish Fort Bridger on the Oregon-California-Utah Trail in Southwestern Wyoming. As trading forts such as Fort Bridger and El Pueblo increasingly supplied emigrant wagon trains and traded for buffalo robes with Plains Indian hunters, the Rocky Mountain fur trade era faded away.


Resource Kits

Object Library

Museums

Bent's Fort and the Fur Trade

Fur Trade in Colorado Timeline

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