The Boggs House built ca. 1186-1887. It incorporates both Spanish Colonial and Greek Revival architectural features.

Photograph courtesy of the
Boggsville Historic Site

Boggsville Historic Site is located in Bent County, southeastern Colorado.  It is two miles south of Las Animas on Colorado 101.  It is a property of the Pioneer Historical Society of Bent County, a non-profit corporation which owns or manages three historic properties.  The PHSBC was founded in 1957 and became a non-profit corporation by 1968.  In 1985, a 110 acre parcel containing the main site of Boggsville was gifted to the PHSBC.  Boggsville is located on the west bank of the Purgatoire River, only two miles from its mouth with the Arkansas River.  The Arkansas River served as the international boundary between the U.S. and Spain and Mexico throughout the first half of the 19^th century. 

Rumalda Luna Boggs, of the influential JaramilloÕs of Taos, New Mexico, and step-daughter of Charles Bent of the famous Bent, St. Vrain & Company, obtained an allotment of 2,040 acres on the lower Purgatoire River, part of a four-million acre 1843 Vigil-St. Vrain Mexican land grant.  The grants principals were her uncle, Cornelio Vigil and Ceran St. Vrain, her godfather and partner of the BentÕs.  The site initially functioned as a line camp in the 1840s and 1850s for the New Mexican sheep industry, and in the early 1860s became the initial settlement in the lower Purgatoire River in southeastern Colorado.  The settlementÕs period of influence paralleled ColoradoÕs territorial period from the early 1860s through the mid-1870s.  

Rumalda Luna Boggs

Photograph courtesy of the
Boggsville Historic Site

 

Josefa Jaramillo Carson and Kit Carson Jr., ca. 1860
Photograph courtesy of the
Boggsville Historic Site
 

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the early priority was the rehabilitation of the 1866 Boggs House and the 1869 Prowers House, out of about 25 known structures.  The two adobe buildings represent the only extant original structures left on the site from the 1860s-1870s period.  Historical archaeology plays a vital role in the accurate redevelopment and interpretation of the site.  Archaeological surveys and on-going excavations have revealed the subsurface remains of the west and north wings of the 1867-1869 Prowers House, used as the first Bent County courthouse and hotel, the first Bent County schoolhouse constructed in 1871, and the Boggsville Branch of the Santa Fe Trail used extensively between 1867-1873.  Present archaeological research is focused on locating the remains of the Kit Carson home, constructed in 1862-1863 and, John Prowers Trading House, both located in the vicinity of the earlier line camp along the Purgatoire River. 

The present interpretive plan include two interpretive brochures, interpretive displays at designated locations along a self-guided trail, in both houses, in addition to plans to develop a Santa Fe Trail room.  These relate to themes encompassing international, national, state and local events and associations relating to: 

            1)   Boggsville serving as a center of cultural, social, economic and other forms of exchange among Americans, New Mexicans and Native Americans.  Historically important individuals that settled Boggsville (i.e. Missourians Kit Carson and Thomas Boggs and their Hispanic New Mexican wives, Josefa Jaramillo Carson and Rumalda Luna Boggs (Josefa was RumaldaÕs aunt), respectively.  Additionally, Missourian John Prowers and Amache, a Cheyenne woman whose father Ochinee (One Eye) was killed at the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864 and other individuals involved in similar cross-cultural relationships;

2)   BoggsvilleÕs role during the   Territorial period;

3)   Associations with other important regional events and places (BentÕs New Fort, Fort Wise/Lyon, Sand Creek Massacre, second Fort Lyon, and Las Animas City); and

3)   Local events featuring an early ranching and farming frontier.

The goals outlined by the PHSBC are, in addition to continuing the preservation efforts, to provide an educational environment that serves both heritage tourism goals and interested students of history and archaeology who desire a hands-on experience into the extensive and far ranging frontier history of the southeastern Colorado borderlands.

Amache Ochinee Prowers

Photograph courtesy of the
Boggsville Historic Site

For a complete listing of special events, programs, classes and resources, please visit

http://www.santafetrailscenicandhistoricbyway.org/boggsville.html

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