Bent’s Old Fort / Great Sand Dunes

Southwestern Trip 2022 | Lake Scott, KS to Great Sand Dunes, CO | Camp Amanche | Bent’s Old Fort NHS | Great Sand Dunes National Park | October 2022

When we woke up at Lake Scott, it was overcast, dreary, and cold. But the region around the lake was so nice, we decided to at the very least drive around and get some better views of the actual lake. We followed the park road around the West shore and debated on whether we should kayak, but by then it had started to sprinkle so we opted to do a little hiking instead. We found a semi-official trailhead and followed what seemed like a trail along the bluffs overlooking the lake. Occasionally side trails led to the top of the bluffs and some benches, but the trails were so eroded we decided against it — even Charlotte, the most sure-footed of us, didn’t want to scamper up there. Then it started to actually rain and we hightailed it back to the car — after all, we still had 6 hours of driving for the day and several other stops to make.

One of our original plans had us visiting Sand Creek NHS in Eastern Colorado, a site we had missed last winter because the Visitor Center was closed. But what do you know, the visitor center was closed again – one of these trips we’ll pass through Eastern CO NOT in the middle of the week. Instead we opted to tag a couple new Kansas counties, heading South to Garden City before starting West again on US-50.

Once in Colorado, just West of Granada, the rain had stopped and so we got out to stretch the legs, letterbox, and learn about Camp Amanche – a concentration camp for Japanese-American citizens during WWII. After Pearl Harbor, despite no evidence of ‘the 5th Column’ and against his better judgement, FDR was pressured into establishing an exclusion zone on the Pacific coast, requiring any person with as little as 1/16th Japanese heritage, regardless of citizenship, to be relocated, lest they pose a threat to national security. Amanche was the smallest of the permanent camps operated by the War Relocation Authority, but still processed over 10,000 detainees, and a peak population of over 7000 (which made it one of the most populous places in all of Colorado at the time). Despite the injustices of being incarcerated, the detainees made the most of camp life, growing Freedom Gardens, publishing a newspaper, and running farmers markets. As many of the detainees had been farmers in California, they excelled at farming, raising produce for the war effort, and even growing produce that had been unsuccessful on the high plains. Many of the detainees even volunteered as soldiers during the war, seeing frequent and often bloody action in the European theatre.

In a bit of stupid irony, at the time of Pearl Harbor, over 50% of all Japanese and Japanese-American peoples lived on Hawaii (around 150k), but of the ~120k people who were incarcerated, less than 2000 were from Hawaii. These few were incarcerated at places like Honouliui NHS on Oahu. Part of this disparity may have been because Hawaii, then a territory, was under martial law. But many believe that, with the Japanese making up almost 35% of the Hawaiian population, incarceration of them all would be logistically infeasible, would decimate the Hawaiian economy, and most importantly, was wholly unnecessary. As you might have guessed, and as an investigation conducted by the Carter administration showed, and as the 442nd Congress under Reagan later tried to issue restitution for – the decision to incarcerate 120k people was based almost entirely upon racism and fear and should be a lesson for future generations.

Today Camp Amanche is open to the public for free. Concrete slabs stand around showing the layout of the camp. Some buildings have been reconstructed and there are informational signs as well as a traditional Japanese cemetery. Additionally, as of this year, Camp Amanche has joined several other concentration camps (including Honouliui) as part of the National Park Service. It’ll probably be a while before we can get a park stamp though.

Having walked and driven around the site, we continued further West on US-50, grabbing new counties and following the Arkansas River and the Santa Fe trail towards our next historic site: Bent’s Old Fort.

Here on the banks of the Arkansas is a full scale reconstruction of the trading post and headquarters of ‘Bent, St. Vrain and Company’ active throughout the 1830’s and 40’s. The trading post served as the only non-Native and non-Mexican establishment along the Santa Fe trail and many traders and Southern Plains tribes used it for the fur trade. The US Government used it as a resupply point for some of its Western explorations as well as a launching point for its invasion of New Mexico during the Mexican-American War and many famous mountain men and explorers are known to have stopped here including John Fremont and Kit Carson.

Following the war, the Fort was briefly abandoned, reoccupied, and then relocated down river to Bent’s New Fort, where business never fully recovered and was defunct by the late 1860’s- a fate similar to other earlier frontier trading posts like Fort Union in Montana.

The original fort burned down in 1849, and it wasn’t until the 1970’s that a replica, based on archaeological excavations, and first hand accounts and drawings, was rebuilt – a feat that is honestly comparable to the reconstruction of the Fortress Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, if at a slightly smaller scale.

Fortunately, as the entire building has been reconstructed, Charlotte was able to conduct the entire tour with us! Park personnel and living history actors really sold the atmosphere and we thoroughly enjoyed the tour.

Once we were done there, it was time to complete our drive into the Rockies and to tonight’s destination near Great Sand Dunes National Park. We were very excited to once again see the Rocky Mountains in their fall glory, since the aspen trees were nearly at peak colors throughout Southern Colorado. It took me right back to our fall trip in 2015, right after Curtis commissioned as an officer and we were starting our life with the military. Unlike that trip, however, Colorado wasn’t our main focus this time. At this “late” in the season, most campgrounds in national forests were closed, and places of interest remained busy with other leaf peepers. So for this trip, we were merely taking a couple days to drive across the state to our main destinations in Southern Utah and Northern Arizona.

We took CO-10 to Walsenburg and then began our drive on US-160 West into the Rockies. We had Curtis’ topographical map in mind as we looked toward the mountains, knowing that two of Colorado’s ultra peaks could possibly be in view. It was too cloudy to see Pikes Peak (if we had been able to), but we got glimpses of Blanca and the Sangre de Cristo Range throughout the afternoon. Beyond that, we were equally as excited to see the giant plain of the San Luis Valley that we now knew existed just West of the front range.

After driving through Blanca, we took CO-150 North up to the Great Sand Dunes. Before visiting the park, we decided to find a campsite in a BLM area that Curtis had found nearby. We drove up to the Zapata Falls trailhead and campground, and picked out a site that had a nice view. At first we were just thankful to have found a site that was still open, and not too crowded being so close to a national park, but this campground really exceeded our expectations. The sites were spread out nicely, most having great views to the West and of Mount Blanca when it was visible.

We set up our tent, put on sweaters, then decided to go check out Great Sand Dunes National Park. It was about a 25 minute drive from the campsite to the visitor’s center and main lot to access the dunes, and today the drive was especially scenic with the golden aspens on display, snow-capped mountains, and dramatic clouds hovering around the surrounding peaks.

Entering the park, we realized that the visitor center had closed at 4:30 and not 5 like we expected, so we weren’t able to get cancellation stamps this time. At first we were disappointed, but after spending just a couple hours in the park, we knew we’d absolutely have to come back someday because we were very pleasantly surprised by how much there is to do here besides see the dunes, and because the whole park is much more dog-friendly than we had thought!

For today, we parked near the main dune entrance and began our walk. Charlotte always loves running around in sand and kicking it up as she goes, so we already knew this place would be a big hit for her. Naturally, we set our sights on what looked like the highest point around us and generally made our way in that direction. It wasn’t long though before both the altitude and strong winds harshly blowing sand against us thwarted our plans. We struggled up as far as we could, and when we agreed we’d pushed ourselves far enough we decided to turn around. Charlotte took this opportunity to race down the dune with reckless abandon, dragging Curtis behind her. Our time at the park definitely didn’t even scratch the surface of everything we could have done here, but the scenery we enjoyed was incredible, we took plenty of pictures, and made happy memories here, and have every intention of coming back and spending more time here someday.

While driving back up to our campsite, we enjoyed watching the sunset and the dramatic colors reflected on the clouds and peaks. We also noted how great the view is of the park even just from the road — even if you aren’t camping here or hiking to Zapata Falls, it’s worth driving a few miles up this winding road just to see the rippling dunes and mountains surrounding from a different perspective.

That evening, we enjoyed watching the sunset from our campsite and made soup to warm ourselves up from the cold. Charlotte and I settled in to the tent to read and snuggle, and shortly after Curtis saw a grey fox run right by our tent! It rained a little throughout the night, but at least we didn’t get snow like we saw on higher elevations in the morning!