Along the Santa Fe Trail to Boggsville

We are camping along Route 50 which is part of the original Santa Fe Trail which runs from Independence, Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  We are on the Mountain Branch of the trail which followed the Arkansas River westward out of Kansas and veered more west and north, then dropped southwest at La Junta.  This route was longer but had more rivers and grazing areas for livestock whereas the southern route called the Cimarron was much faster but more treacherous due much less water. Choose which one you took based on the time of year you were traveling.  Just east of La Junta is a town called Las Animas and there is a link to Kit Carson there.

Originally they were buried here, now rest in Taos

We read where Kit Carson spent the last years of his life in a small settlement near Las Animas called Boggsville.  Founded by Thomas Boggs who worked at Bent's Old Fort, his wife, Rumalda, was granted 2,040 acre parcel as settlement of her step-father's holdings (she was Charles Bent's step-daughter and he was killed in Taos during an uprising by the Taos Indians and Hispanics - Bent was governor of Colorado at that time).  Thomas Boggs constructed a 6 room home along the banks of the Purgatories River and more settlers came to live in this small community 3 miles from Bent's Old Fort.

Boggs first home, Carsons lived in with Houghs for a time

What his looked like

And now

Boggs second home

Kit Carson and his wife Josefa were the uncle and aunt of Rumalda.  The Carsons often grazed their cattle through the area of Boggsville and came to live in Boggsville, staying with another family called Houghs in Boggs old home (Boggs had built a new 2 story, 14 room home near the old) while Carson was building his own home.  The Carsons did not live long in Boggsville, sadly, Josefa died of complications of child-birth and within 1 month Kit Carson also died, some say of a broken heart when in fact he died of an aortic aneurysm.  Their children were adopted and raised to adulthood by Thomas and Rumalda Boggs in Boggsville.

Dry Purgatoires River

Boggsville was the county seat beginning in 1870 until 1874 when Las Animas took over when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad come through to Las Animas, bypassing Boggsville.  A bridge over the Arkansas River was built in 1874 and this also shifted the Santa Fe Trail emigrants away from Boggsville. A general store, public school, livery, library, church, irrigation ditches to support the farms and ranches, the town once boasted 576 people with over 20 structures.  People moved away from Boggsville and the last resident left in 1905, and the town's buildings deteriorated to ghost town until 1986 when the Bent County Historical Society took over and restorations began.  Sadly, the home that Kit and Josefa lived in is gone but the Boggs home still stands.