Site Last Updated on
March 28, 2012
Educator’s Encampment
This popular living history instructional event provides participants the unique opportunity to learn about 1840s life by living it! Although designed for educators, and living historians, it is open to anyone who has an interest in history that extends beyond the history books. For the event, participants are given roles of trader, trapper-hunter, laborer, blacksmith, carpenter, Dragoon soldier, Army Topographical Engineer or domestic cook. Participants gain a much deeper understanding of frontier life and the realities of fur trade era in the American West.
Visitors are of course welcome at the Fort during this event.
On the first day, participants are provided study materials and lectures on history, living history, and interpretive skills. Living historians will teach and direct participants in use of 19th century work techniques and social skills. Depending on role, the student/mentor ratio may be as low as three or four to one. That evening participants are taken out to overnight in a wagon camp on the Santa Fe Trail. For the next 72 hours or so, participants will fully live their occupational and social roles in the context of Bent's Fort and the southern plains of 1847.
While living and learning under these conditions, most participants form strong bonds of friendship with their fellow students. For those who choose to participate as volunteers in subsequent special living history events at the fort, each event becomes a kind of family reunion.
The links below are to images from previous Encampments.
