7 JANUARY 8-14, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | Colorado is at a crossroads. Again. Back in 1833, brothers William and Charles Bent, along with trader Ceran St. Vrain, built a fort on the north side of the Arkansas River, the border of a territory claimed by both the United States and Old Mexico. It quickly became a busy trading post frequented by trappers, travelers, mem- bers of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, and the U.S. Army. And for the most part, everyone got along. “It is seldom that such a variety of in- gredients are found mixed up in so small a compass,” wrote Josiah Gregg, who visited the fort in 1847 and described in his journal what he found there — a wide range of people speaking a number of languages, but communicating effectively and peacefully. For sixteen years, the fort was the only major stop on the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and the Mexican settlements. But, beset by disease and other disasters, it was abandoned in 1849 by its founders, who went on to start other trading posts in the increasingly confl icted territory. Its signifi cance remained, however. In 1960, Bent’s Old Fort became a National Historic Landmark, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. Over 140 years after the trading post was founded — and just in time for the U.S. bicentennial and Colorado’s centennial in 1876 — the National Park Service led the charge to reconstruct Bent’s Fort as it had looked in the 1840s. The crew used con- temporary sketches, paintings and diaries like Gregg’s to recreate the replica on the original grounds of the trading post outside of what had become La Junta, turning piles of disintegrating adobe walls into a new Bent’s Old Fort, a major tourist attraction and economic driver for southeastern Colorado. Fifty years ago, it reminded Americans that history was not all about tall ships and Civil War battlegrounds. Tourists would travel hundreds of miles to catch re-enactments at the fort, watch birds in the wetlands along the river, shop in the gift shop (after the dedication of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site in 2007, I ran into Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell there, looking at a display of his jewelry), and get a feel for how people had lived decades before Colorado became a state. There was just one problem: This fort was not made to last, either. Today, the adobe is crumbling, taking history down with it. The site is in such bad condition that the NPS wrote the Colorado State Historic Preserva- tion Offi ce early last year to suggest that the complex be deemed “a non-historic struc- ture” that was “ineligible for the National Register of Historic Places.” In the meantime, the NPS closed much of Bent’s Old Fort to the public over safety concerns, allowing visitors to visit only the plaza in the center of the structure and take an occasional tour carefully guided by a ranger. continued on page 8 MONIKA SWIDERSKI
