Monday, July 8, 2019

La Veta Colorado

We are in another small commercial campground. This place got good reviews and has a laundry. On our way here we stopped at 'Bent's Old Fort National Monument'. Pretty interesting place. It was a built by some early entrepreneurs to capture profits from the fur trade that was booming in the 1840s and 50s. It's right on the Arkansas river that, at the time, was the US/Mexico border. The fur trade started out being primarily beaver but after we killed all of them off the trade shifted to buffalo. The Indians provided the buffalo hides and we gave them alcohol and cholera. We eventually killed off all the buffalo and shipped the remaining Indians to Oklahoma so the whole enterprise eventually collapsed. The structure that we toured is a rebuilt replica based on good drawings that survived the original forts destruction by fire in 1864. The pics were taken at the fort.

No comments:

Post a Comment