Photo Gallery (U.S. National Park Service)

Virtual tour shows most rooms visited by the public.

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Typical smells in the kitchen may have been cottonwood smoke, spices, grease droppings, and the rank odor of spoiled meat and rotting foodstuffs. Amidst flying towels, steam, and clanging pots one could find the cooks. Several were employed at the fort, but William Bent's slave, Charlotte received greater notice for her famous "flapjacks and pumpkin pies." Visitor George Ruxton wrote of her "foods that were celebrated from Long's Peak to the Cumbres Espanoles." Archeological depositis uncovered include wild game such as duck, turkey, pronghorn, venison, and buffalo. The ledgers of Bent, St. Vrain and Company of 1839 included flour, dried peaches, cheese, rice, almonds, raisins, 1,190 pounds of bacon sides, and 2 barrels of pork in addition to large amounts of coffee, tea, sugar, salt, molasses, and produce from New Mexico. Wild greens were used as spice and medicine.

$The repair of wagons was critical to the success of Bent's Fort. During some periods of the fort's history, it resembled a wrecking yard, with broken axles, fractured hubs, splintered side boards, mounds of white canvas and piles of abandoned tongues and spreaders. The fort's craftsmen were especially anxious to salvage the iron parts, which could be reworked into other useful pieces. One might find hooves to make glue, and rawhide- the duct tape of the 1840s. Hardwoods from Missouri were cut and shaved into wagon parts. Making do with what they had, they kept the wagons rollling.$

Virtual Tour of Fort

Kitchen

Blacksmith Shop

Carpenter Shop

Warehouse

Laborer's Quarters

Maggoffin Room

Living Quarters

Billiard Room

St. Vrain's Room

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