Fort Vasquez was rebuilt today, as shown in a photo from Blake20CO’s Flickr photostream.
Fort Vasquez was a fur trading post built by Louis Vasquez and Andrew Sublette in 1835 for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company along the South Platte River in Colorado. After obtaining a trading license in St. Louis, Missouri, from William Clark, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, they began trading with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians in the area.
Strategically located between Fort Laramie, Wyoming, to the North and Bent’s Old Fort, Colorado, to the South, and situated along the Trapper’s Trail, the trading post was successful for several years and eventually hired many of its trapper friends, including Baptiste Charbonneau and Jim Beckwourth. However, when the price and demand for beaver pelts declined, the adobe trading post was sold to the firm of Locke and Randolph in 1840. That firm later went bankrupt, and Louis Vasquez and Andrew Sublette never collected the full sale price. In 1842, they abandoned the post.
By 1932, only the foundations of a few feet of the exterior walls remained. Two years later, the owners of the Fort Vasquez Ranch deeded an acre of land surrounding the fort to Weld County. In 1935-36, Works Progress Administration crews rebuilt the walls from existing bricks on site, complete with guard towers. Today, it operates as the Fort Vasquez Museum, located at 13412 U.S. Highway 85 in Platteville, Colorado.
By Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated September 2026.
Also See:
Colorado – The Centennial State
See Sources.