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 A ...

History

First called Fort Lancaster, it was established by

Lancaster Lupton Lancaster Platt Lupton (September 21, 1807 – October 1, 1885) was the son of William Lupton, Jr. (a New York City Lawyer). He attended West Point, graduating with the class of 1829. In 1835, Lieutenant Lupton was a member of Colonel Henry Dod ...

, a former lieutenant,

dragoon Dragoons were originally a class of mounted infantry, who used horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight on foot. From the early 17th century onward, dragoons were increasingly also employed as conventional cavalry and trained for combat wi ...

soldier, and

West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), commonly known as West Point, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York that educates cadets for service as Officer_(armed_forces)#United_States, comm ...

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 an American politician and military officer who was Democratic member to the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, Territorial Governor of Wisconsin and a veteran of the Bla ...

. 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 Midwestern United States, Midwest and the American Sou ...

in the late 1830s. The others were Fort Jackson, Fort Vasquez, and Fort Saint Vrain. Trappers and Native Americans traded at Fort Lupton, which was located on the Trapper's Trail between

Laramie, Wyoming Laramie () is a List of municipalities in Wyoming, city in and the county seat of Albany County, Wyoming, United States, known for its high elevation at , for its railroad history, and as the home of the University of Wyoming. The population wa ...

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,

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

and

John C. Frémont Major general (United States), Major-General John Charles Frémont (January 21, 1813July 13, 1890) was a United States Army officer, explorer, and politician. He was a United States senator from California and was the first History of the Repub ...

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 facility along a main road or trade route where a traveller can rest and/or replace exhausted working animals (mostly horse riding, riding h ...

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, ...

. 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.

References

External links

{{authority control 1836 establishments in unorganized territory of the United States Former populated places in Colorado Former populated places in Weld County, Colorado Lupton Fur trade Geography of Weld County, Colorado Trading posts in Colorado

History

Aftermath and reconstruction

See also

References

Further reading

External links