Bent's New Fort

Neither stone here names the paper signed on this bluff. William Bent raised his stone trading post in 1853 above Big Timbers, a Cheyenne and Arapaho wintering ground, and leased it to the Army, which called the post Fort Wise. There, on February 18, 1861, six Cheyenne and four Arapaho chiefs, Black Kettle and Little Raven among them, signed away most of the country the 1851 Fort Laramie treaty had recognized as theirs, for a reservation between the Arkansas and Sand Creek. Most of their people repudiated it. Chivington attacked Black Kettle's camp on that reservation in 1864.

What the plaque says

Fort Bent, Later, Fort Wise Santa Fe Trail 1822 - 1872 Marked by the Daughters of the American Revolution Zebulon Pike Chapter 1908 The site of Bent's New Fort built by William W. Bent in 1853 as an Indian trading post. Sold to U. S. Government, 1859. Buildings added one mile west and named Fort Wise in 1860. Re-named Fort Lyon in 1861. Fort moved farther west, 1867 Erected by the State Historical Society of Colorado from the Mrs. J. N. Hall Foundation and by the Lamar Junior Chamber of Commerce 1942

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Amache National Historic Site — 24 mi
  A Japanese American incarceration camp kept from vanishing by a Granada social studies teacher and three decades of his high school students, a national park unit since 2024.

More markers nearby

• Boggsville — 25 mi