Colorado’s first and most distinctive shopping mall opened for business way back in 1833. No tony fashion store labels, yet business was brisk among shoppers who traveled long miles to buy and sell, trade and barter.
Bent’s Old Fort had what real estate types tout as crucial to success – location, location, location. The fort-shopping mall-oasis was on the well-traveled Santa Fe Trail, 15 miles east of what is now La Junta.
Mountain trappers traded with Native Americans, who bargained with soldiers, who bartered with Mexicans, who negotiated with pioneers heeding the call to “Go west, young man.”
Buffalo robes brought by Native Americans were the hot-ticket items. The Southern Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche and Arapaho Indians scored big-time with mountain men looking for winter coats. Wagon repairs were performed in exchange for beaver pelts. Woolen blankets, guns, steel arrowheads, beans, rice, chile peppers, glass beads, soap, medicines and livestock changed hands easily.
Entrepreneurs William and Charles Bent, along with Ceran St. Vrain, built this adobe fort, complete with lookout towers, to offer protection while shoppers conducted their business. It thrived for 16 years, attracting clientele from as far away as Independence, Mo. During the U.S.-Mexican war in 1846, Bent’s Old Fort became a staging area for Col. Stephen Watts Kearny’s “Army of the West.” Disasters and disease took their toll inside the “Castle of the Plains,” and the fort was abandoned in 1849.
More than a century ticked by before plans were laid for the fort’s reconstruction. Archeological excavations, original sketches and diaries were used to rebuild the 800-acre site trading post in time for the country’s bicentennial and Colorado’s centennial in 1976.
Today, Bent’s Old Fort is a National Historic Site, under the auspices of the National Park Service. Pains were taken to re-establish it as precisely as possible to the days of the 1840s. The film “Castle of the Plains” is shown, and interpretive tours present a living history of the days of yore. Poke your head into the powwow room where the West’s earliest diplomatic peace talks were conducted. Today’s trade room stocks reproductions of century-old goods for sale. The dining room, blacksmith and carpenter shops are true to earlier times.
And, as in all 21st-century shopping malls, Bent’s Old Fort holds a holiday celebration, this one Dec. 3 and 4. Living-history volunteers from Colorado and surrounding states will bring the fort to life with the sights, sounds and aromas of a working 19th-century trading post during a holiday season.
Festivities begin at 6:30 p.m. Dec. 3 with a guided candlelight tour of the fort. Interpreters will guide you through the fort’s various rooms where “people of the era” will be preparing to celebrate the holidays. After the tour, everyone is invited to stay for caroling and enjoy treats that were popular in the 1800s. Eight candlelight tours will be available both evenings Dec. 3 and 4. Reservations are recommended; walk-in guests will be accommodated as space allows. Remember to dress warmly and bring a flashlight.
Activities are slated from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Dec. 4. Children can participate in toy-making, games in the plaza, watch trading scenes, take wagon rides, participate in frontier cooking, and listen to storytelling. The whole family can visit nearby Indian and trapper camps, then return for a traditional Yule log hunt. Another tradition is the piata break; kids love trying to break open the candy- and treat-filled animal replica.
The fort also showcases its real animals. You’ll find species that history shows us populated the trading post in the 1840s. Oxen, peacocks, Dominique chickens, a mule and rare Spanish Barb horses, ancestors of the wild mustangs of the West.
Because of the authenticity of Bent’s Old Fort’s reconstruction, the trading post appeared in several Hollywood films. Among them, “How the West Was Won,” “Centennial” and “Chisholm’s Trail II.”
The details
Bent’s Old Fort is about 180 miles southeast of Denver. Drive south on Interstate 25 to Pueblo, east on U.S. 50 to La Junta, Colorado 109 north 1 mile to Colorado 194, then northeast on Colorado 194 for 8 miles.
Fees for the candlelight tours the evenings of Dec. 3 and 4 and for the Dec. 4 daytime activities are $3 for adults and $2 for children 6 to 12. Call 719-383-5026 to reserve a candlelight tour.
Similar fees are charged during the year for guided tours; winter tours are given at 10:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. The fort is open daily 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
For information about Bent’s Old Fort, call 719-383-5010, or visit
Lillian Ross is a freelance writer who lives in Howard.
