Bent's Fort Author:David Lavender In 1833 the Bent brothers, men of formidable will and courage, built a great adobe castle on the banks of the Arkansas. They called it Bent's Fort, and it symbolized America's expansion into the Southwest. Kit Carson and Blackfoot Smith, Old Bill Williams and John Fremont manned the fort. From it they opened New Mexico, Arizona and California. ... more »Old Mexico, slumbering in the decline of empire, lost out. "There have been many good books about the old Santa Fe Trail...but none to match the blend of narrative power, pictorial sense and awareness of the great American melodrama that mark BENT'S FORT." (New York Herald Tribune)« less