This weekend we visited Bent’s Old Fort, a national park in southern Colorado. Bent’s fort is an 1840’s trading post and it is made of adobe bricks. The fort is on the mountain branch of the Santa Fe Trail where traders, trappers, travelers, and Plains Indian tribes came together peacefully for trade.
The main trading was done with the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians for buffalo robes.
Bent's Old Fort national historic site is an outstanding destination for homeschooling families. The quality adobe reconstruction of an 1840s trading post on the Santa Fe trail is an example of what loving attention to detail can provide through living history. This isolated trading post, the Castle of the Plains, brought the Plains and Pueblo Indians, Mexicans, and Americans together for trade, and business, family, and political relationships developed that forever changed lives. Even the bookstore is of unusual quality, as it is stocked with many items accurate to the period, including powder horns, copper rum cups, shells, baskets, blankets, and hand-made leather pouches.
The Junior Ranger program at Bent's Old Fort is high-quality because instead of merely asking questions, the booklet elicits thought processes that put the kids in mind of the history that led to construction of the fort in the first place. For example, the first question is worded this way: "Imagine you are a trader out West in 1833 with Willam and Charles Bent and Ceran St. Vrain. You want to build a new trading post. Where can you place it so you can attract the most trade? How do you decide? Maybe you could look at a map and start drawing circles on it where you might want to build a trading post..." The booklet provides a map of the region and denotes rivers, the Trail, 1830s Mexico, Indian camps, buffalo herds, and beaver, and then leads the student to a logical conclusion about where to build the fort. This is one of the best parks we've visited, and that is really saying something, because the National Park Service Junior Ranger program is an underappreciated gem. For more photos, please visit our Santa Fe blog. For a look at our related stop at the Comanche National Grasslands, click here. 
