Gantt's Picket Post (Las Animas, Colorado)
Las Animas · Colorado · Indian Wars
History & Significance
Gantt's Picket Post represents an early phase of American fur-trade expansion on the Arkansas River before the dominance of larger trading enterprises. Established by former Army officer John Gantt and his partner Jefferson Blackwell, the post consisted of modest wooden structures designed to trade furs and robes with Native American groups and supply mountain trappers.
Its location at the Purgatoire River junction made it strategically valuable, but its brief tenure highlighted the intense commercial competition on the frontier. The post's abandonment in 1834 preceded the consolidation of the trade under the Bent, St. Vrain & Company, which would establish the more substantial Bent's Fort nearby.
Gantt later relocated his enterprise, founding Fort Cass near Pueblo. The site's ruins remain archaeologically significant as evidence of early American trading-post architecture and the multi-ethnic workforce—including Kit Carson—who operated on the early Colorado frontier.
Key Facts
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_history_of_the_Arkansas_Valley_in_Colorado
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Animas,_Colorado
- https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/nineteenth-century-trading-posts
- https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/las-animas-county
- http://www.mman.us/gantt.htm
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_forts_in_Colorado
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trading_posts_in_Colorado