Fort Lupton, located in the city of the same name, was a trading post from 1836 or 1837 to 1844. After operating as a stage coach station and used as a house, the building fell into disrepair and crumbled to all but a portion of one wall by the early 20th century. The trading post has been reconstructed yards away from its original site and is now part of the South Platte Historical Park in northwestern

Fort Lupton, Colorado The City of Fort Lupton is a Statutory City located in southern Weld County, Colorado, United States. The town population was 7,955 at the 2020 United States Census. Fort Lupton is a part of the Greeley, Colorado Metropolitan Statistical Area ...

History

First called Fort Lancaster, it was established by Lancaster Lupton, a former lieutenant, dragoon soldier, and

West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known Metonymy, metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a f ...

graduate. He first visited the area during the Dodge-Leavenworth Expedition with Col.

Henry Dodge Moses Henry Dodge (October 12, 1782 – June 19, 1867) was a Democratic member to the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, Territorial Governor of Wisconsin and a veteran of the Black Hawk War. His son, Augustus C. Dodge, served a ...

. He resigned and returned to the South Platte area to build the trading post with the assistance of Mexican and Native American men. It had 15-foot walls of adobe brick and an enclosed area of about 125 feet by 150 feet. For defense, it had a tower overlooking the countryside and holes on the second floor to shoot rifles at hostile people. The fort contained a series of small rooms used for living quarters and trading, a blacksmith shop, and a commissary. Fort Lupton was one of several trading posts established along a 13-mile stretch of the

South Platte River The South Platte River is one of the two principal tributaries of the Platte River. Flowing through the U.S. states of Colorado and Nebraska, it is itself a major river of the American Midwest and the American Southwest/ Mountain West. It ...

in the late 1830s. The others were Fort Jackson,

Fort Vasquez Fort Vasquez is a former fur trade, fur trading post northeast of Denver, Colorado, United States, founded by Louis Vasquez and Andrew Sublette in 1835. Restored by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, it now lies in a rather incongruo ...

, and

Fort Saint Vrain Fort Saint Vrain was an 1837 fur trading post built by the Bent, St. Vrain Company, and located at the confluence of Saint Vrain Creek and the South Platte River, about 20 miles (32 km) east of the Rocky Mountains in the unorganized terri ...

. Trappers and Native Americans traded at Fort Lupton, which was located on the

Trapper's Trail The Trapper's Trail or Trappers' Trail is a north-south path along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains that links the Great Platte River Road at Fort Laramie and the Santa Fe Trail at Bent's Old Fort. Along this path there were a number of ...

between

Laramie, Wyoming Laramie is a city in and the county seat of Albany County, Wyoming, United States. The population was estimated 32,711 in 2019, making it the third-largest city in Wyoming after Cheyenne and Casper. Located on the Laramie River in southeast ...

and Santa Fe. They traded buffalo hides and beaver pelts for goods, such as food staples, cloth, blankets, pots, pans, knives, and guns. Supplies and livestock were also sold to settlers. Traders could made enough money in one summer to purchase a farm in the eastern portion of the United States. There may have been as many as 40 people living at the trading post, many of whom were Spanish-speaking employees, during its operation.

Rufus Sage Rufus B. Sage (1817–1893) was an American writer, journalist and later mountain man. He is known as the author of ''Scenes in the Rocky Mountains'' published in 1846, depicting the life of fur trappers. Life Rufus B. Sage was born on March 17 ...

Kit Carson Christopher Houston Carson (December 24, 1809 – May 23, 1868) was an American frontiersman. He was a fur trapper, wilderness guide, Indian agent, and U.S. Army officer. He became a frontier legend in his own lifetime by biographies and ...

and John C. Frémont visited Fort Lupton. In the early 1840s, the fur trade collapsed and the trading posts closed.

Aftermath and reconstruction

After the trading post closed, it was unused until 1859 when it was used as a

stage station A stage station or relay station, also known as a staging post, a posting station, or a stage stop, is a place where exhausted horses could be replaced by fresh animals, since a long journey was much faster without delays when horses needed rest ...

during the

gold rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, New ...

. It was then used by a family named Ewing as a house for a number of years. It had deteriorated by 1900 and only a wall remained by the 1920s. In 1926, the Territorial Daughters of Colorado installed a wrought iron fence and historical marker at the site of the former trading post. The land was repurposed again when an oil rig was established there. Later, the land was acquired by the South Platte Historical Society. The original site of the fort is an archaeological site. In 2009, the fort was reconstructed a few yards from the site of the trading post using some of the original adobe bricks. South Platte Valley Historical Park was established by the South Platte Valley Historical Society northwest of the city of Fort Lupton. It includes a reconstruction of the adobe trading post, Fort Lupton, and is a historical park about area settlement.

History

Aftermath and reconstruction

References

Further reading