Grant to help document Bent’s New Fort, Sand Creek

The Southeast Colorado Regional Heritage Task Force has received a grant to help document the role of Bent’s New Fort in the Sand Creek Massacre.

Bent’s New Fort was built in 1853 after the abandonment nearby of Bent’s Old Fort, which was a 19th-century trading post on the Santa Fe Trail. It became the staging area for the Nov. 29, 1864, attack by U.S. soldiers on a peaceful encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians along Sand Creek. More than 150 Indians — most of them women, children or elderly — were killed.

The National Park Service said Monday that a $43,533 grant will go toward historical and archaeological investigations of the boundaries and significance of Bent’s New Fort as it relates to the massacre.

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