Fort Morgan, Colorado: Stobie

Friday, January 21, 2011

Artist on the Plains

Even during the height of the Indian Wars, emigrants along the South Platte River Road sometimes traveled hundreds of miles without having problems with the natives. The western artist Charles Stewart Stobie traveled along the South Platte River trail in the summer of 1865, though he must have passed the burnt out remnants of stage stations, he wrote instead about leisurely pursuits than the destruction along the trail. The following excerpt from Stobie’s journal begins just as his party left Julesburg:

Historic Overview

From my youth I brought with me only a vague impression of the history of the small town in which I was raised. Fort Morgan, Colorado, built on the site of a short-lived military fort in the heart of the great American desert; a fort that had never been attacked, never seen a battle. On little more than a whim I went in search of the fort’s operational dates (1864-1868), expecting this information would come readily to hand and that would end my curiosity - the fort once again fading into the midst of vague memory. To my surprise, I instead found a door opening to the history of the west.

The history of Fort Morgan will never rival that of Denver or glisten with the same gold dust of the mountain mining towns, but this little town on the plains of Colorado was central to the story of the Romantic west; it's story connecting with the major events of the age. Everyone has a history and every place is central to a story. What follows is the story from the land - of the land - on which Fort Morgan would rise.