In 1833, brothers Charles and William Bent and Ceran St. Vrain – three of the West’s most famous Mountain Men – created Bent, St. Vrain, & Co. at what is now the site of Bent’s Old Fort on the Arkansas River. It quickly became an important trading post on the Santa Fé Trail between Missouri and New Mexico. Traders working at the fort acquired buffalo hides from nearby bands of Cheyenne and Arapaho and sold the hides in St. Louis, where the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers meant quick distribution to the rest of the country.
In 1841–42, Bent, St. Vrain, & Co. failed to deliver a shipment of hides, creating a shortage in eastern markets. George Simpson, a trader who worked at Bent’s Fort, saw that the shortage created an opportunity for him to establish a new trading post independent of a large company like Bent, St. Vrain, & Co.
Called El Pueblo (Spanish for “town” or “people”), the post was distinctive in that it was neither a military fort nor owned by a trading company. Instead, it was an independent post that served as a base of operations for a diverse group of traders with Hispanic, French, Anglo, and Native American roots. Noted traders, trappers, and mountain men such as Kit Carson, Richens Lacy Wootton, and James Beckwourth stayed there while the post was active. Hispano women like Teresita Sandoval provided the essential infrastructure for the day-to-day operations while each trader who stayed there had a few rooms for himself and his family and used the central plaza as a common trading area, with goods laid out on blankets on the ground.
Built in the summer of 1842, the exact shape, size, and appearance of the post are unknown, but surviving accounts indicate that it was probably an adobe plaza similar in appearance to a New Mexico country house, with a series of rooms arranged in a rough square around a central courtyard. The rooms opened onto the interior plaza and had no entries on the outside, making the structure easier to defend. There was probably a large gate that allowed access to the central plaza from the side that faced the Arkansas River. Thus, the museum includes a re-created 1840s adobe trading post and plaza, as well as the archaeological excavation site of the original post.
The post’s location, where the Arkansas River is joined by Fountain Creek, was the then border between the United States and Mexico. Trading routes such as the Cherokee and Taos trails ran nearby providing easy access to multiple markets and trading partners, whilst Native American groups often passed through the area to use a well-known crossing of the Arkansas. In addition, its low elevation, temperate climate and prevalence of water made it a center for farming and ranching enterprises. Here produce and livestock were sold to wagon trains along the emigrant and trading trails, including to Utah bound Mormons who learned about irrigation and other techniques for farming in the arid West from its residents.
In the late 1840s, El Pueblo had begun to decline. The double blow to trade of the Mexican-American War of 1848 and the discovery of gold in California in the same year meant that the population dwindled. Simultaneously, the influx of European Americans moving to and through the plains and Rocky Mountains had begun to place new pressures on Native Americans in the region. In 1854 Utes upset by broken treaties and poorly conducted negotiations began to skirmish with settlers in what is now southern Colorado. On Christmas Eve, 1854, the Ute chief Tierra Blanca led about fifty warriors in an attack on El Pueblo, killing most of the people inside, after which the post was abandoned.