Fort Junction

No one is sure the fort stood two hundred feet east of here. A Library of Congress map of Colorado Territory puts it west of where Boulder and St. Vrain creeks meet, inside what is now St. Vrain State Park across the interstate, and local researchers think this spot may be where the Home Guard mustered. The guard, four officers and fifty-eight volunteers, stacked sod in strips a foot wide in July 1864, and no attack came. A sister fort near Valmont trained Boulder County men who joined the 3rd Colorado that August and rode to Sand Creek.

What the plaque says

This memorial is the property of the State of Colorado Two hundred feet due east of this point stood Fort Junction a sod enclosure erected in 1864 by the pioneers of Boulder and St. Vrain valleys as a protection against hostile Indians. Garrisoned by the Home Guards. Erected by the State Historical Society of Colorado from the Mrs. J. N. Hall Foundation and by the Tri-Town Lions Club (Frederick, Dacono and Firestone) and the Rinn community 1939

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Colorado Chautauqua — 20 mi
  A summer school for Texas teachers that Boulder built in under eight weeks in 1898, still running at the foot of the Flatirons.
• Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge — 24 mi
  Mustard gas, nerve agent and pesticides for forty years, then bald eagles, bison and black-footed ferrets on the same ground.

More markers nearby

• Fort Vasquez — 8.6 mi
• Fort Lupton — 9.8 mi
• Namaqua — 18 mi
• Evans — 21 mi