Fort Lupton Colorado is a tiny community where the author grew up. The town is named after a trading post founded by Lancaster Lupton. Lupton was a Lieutenant in the Army, serving in the Dragoons.1 While in the military Lupton was intrigued by tales he had heard. Newton noted that "Members of the military expedition, such as Lieutenant Lancaster Lupton, had been entertained with stories of trade from John Gantt, an expedition scout and erstwhile trader in the region, as well as made aware that bison robes purchased in the plains for $.25 could be sold in St. Louis for $5–6."2
This incentivized Lupton
to establish his own trading post after he left the military. “Fort Lupton became the first permanent anglo
settlement in northern Colorado and prospered beyond his expectations. The fur
trade declined in the 1840s and, after the severe winter of 1844-45, he
abandoned the post, moving first to New Mexico and then to California.”3
After this, the post was abandoned for about ten years before being used as a stage coach stop
and eventually an outpost for the Union army during the Civil War. By 1890 the town had a population of about 180. By the time this author had moved there, in 1982, the town population had grown to about 4500 people. After the divorce of the author’s parents, in the early 1980s, the author and his brother were awarded custody to their mother and moved to Fort Lupton, where she took up residence temporarily with a friend of the family.
After
establishing her own household, the author’s mother, Penny, started to work for
the city of Fort Lupton as a dispatch officer, where she met Charles, and
remarried to him a year or so later. Working as an oil rig production engineer,
Charles would drive around Weld county checking production for Macchi-Ross
petroleum, a small oil producer in Colorado.
After
living in Colorado from 2nd Grade to 10th Grade in public
school, the author moved to his father’s home in North Platte, Nebraska,
several hundred miles down the Platte River system. It is in the town of North Platte
that the South and North Platte rivers join to form the Platte River, which
eventually feeds into the Mississippi river.
After
graduating from High School in North Platte, the author enlisted in the United
States Navy and served for 20 years, non-consecutively as a computer and
electronics technician, primarily working in the U.S. Submarine Service. It was
in the U’S. Navy where the author met his soon to be spouse, Teena.
The
author and Teena eventually went back to Fort Lupton for a visit and have had a
private tour of the reconstructed Fort Lupton. Penny, the author’s mother, is
now one of the caretakers of the fort and helps to maintain the grounds.
_______________
1. South Platte Valley Historical Society.
“Lancaster Lupton’s Trade Fort,” 2020. https://www.spvhs.org/luptons-fort.html.
2. Newton, Cody. “Native Place,
Environment, and the Trade Fort Concentration on the South Platte River,
1835-45.” Ethnohistory 59, no. 2 (2012): 239–60.
3. Fort
Wiki. “Fort Lupton,” 2021. http://www.fortwiki.com/Fort_Lupton.
