Fort Chambers, Company D, and the Sand Creek Massacre | Fort Chambers/Poor Farm Site Information

The city and community’s understanding of the Sand Creek Massacre and its continuing legacy in Indigenous communities will be an ongoing lesson and further enhanced by:

Continuing conversation and learning with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, the Northern Arapaho Tribe and the Northern Cheyenne Tribe.
A planned ethnographic report that will be based on interviews with Tribal Representatives. The report – which will include stories from other Tribal Nations – is currently under development and will take time to complete.

Fort Chambers

Fort Chambers is one of several civilian-built fortifications on the Front Range that were constructed in 1864 and reportedly located at an interval of approximately every 10 miles in the settled areas along the Front Range (Affleck, 2001). Fort Chambers is closely associated with Fort Junction which was located on the northern side of Saint Vrain Creek in the Longmont area (formerly known as Burlington). The fortification was positioned to provide shelter for those living in the area between Boulder and Saint Vrain Creeks, including Boulder, Valmont, and southern Burlington. (Block, 1942)

After the completion of Fort Junction, a combined group of Boulder and Burlington men began construction on Fort Chambers north of Valmont. Various historical records, maps and past newspaper articles have placed the location of the fort on or near the Fort Chambers / Poor Farm property. However, recent surveys have not revealed definitive indications of the fort’s remains nor has city staff found artifacts associated with Company D on the property.

Construction of Fort Chambers likely started sometime after June 11, 1864, and was reportedly completed in August, possibly after the official establishment of Company D. The fort was used on August 21st to house a significant number of civilians in response to a potentially fictitious report made to a man named Elbridge Gerry and communicated to Governor Evans warning of a supposedly coordinated attack by "Apaches, Comanches, Kiowas, Cheyennes, and Arapahoes” on Front Range settlements (Lecompte, 1964). There is evidence that some residents of Valmont may have continued to use the fort after the 21st (U.S. HR, 1872).

After the Sand Creek Massacre, the fort was abandoned and quickly fell into disrepair. The fort was not utilized during the conflicts of 1867, likely due to its dilapidated state and the low degree of actual threat to Boulder. Mary Hummel Wells, a former owner of the property, said the fort's walls were discernable in 1920 and that the gate posts from the fort were pulled up and given to a local museum. Those posts were later reportedly destroyed in a fire at the museum.

Company D

From Aug. 28 to Sept. 16, 1864, more than 100 Boulder County men trained at Fort Chambers and mobilized into Company D of the Third Colorado Cavalry. Company D included 46 Boulder men and prominent Boulder County residents (Taylor, 2014). Around 70% were farmers.

The members of Company D of the Third Colorado Cavalry were mostly drawn from local militia groups already present in Boulder County. The earliest of these groups were established in 1862, including the “Boulder County Mounted Rifles”, officered in part by Captain Thomas A. Aikins and 2nd Lieutenant George W. Chambers based in Boulder and Valmont (Taylor, 2014). Another militia that contributed men to Company D was the Evans Guards founded in 1863 and captained by Andrew Jackson Pennock based in Burlington (now known as Longmont) (Nankivell 1935). The orderly sergeant for the Evans Guard was George Coffin. His brother, Morse Coffin, was a member of Company D and wrote a detailed account of the Company’s actions leading up to and during the Sand Creek Massacre (Coffin, 1879).

The formation of two militias in the area is notable given a seemingly low incidence of documented conflicts with Indigenous Peoples (and none with the Arapaho) in the vicinity of Boulder, Valmont, and Burlington since the arrival of the gold seekers in 1858. Primary sources document few actual confirmed conflicts in the area, and some specifically noted a lack of conflict in the period prior to the Sand Creek Massacre (Crifasi 2015: 134; Coffin 1914; Fetter 1983: 29-30; Nankivell, 1935: 445-446; O.L. Baskin & Co, 1880: 380, 398; Brown, 1953).

The militias were formally disbanded in August 1864 when Territorial Governor John Evans received permission from Washington to recruit the “100 days Cavalry”. Members of both militias, in addition to new recruits formed the new Company D. These men mobilized amid exaggerated and dehumanizing claims of Arapaho and Cheyenne attacks on American-Europeans from men like Evans, John Chivington and William Byers, editor of the Rocky Mountain News (Crifasi, 2015: 134). Those claims fanned anti-Indigenous hysteria and even led “panicked” settlers in Boulder to start digging trenches on Broadway and Thirteenth Streets (Crifasi, 2015: 135).

The pre 1864 militias were armed with “Garibaldi and Mississippi rifles” acquired from the War Department. Many of these arms are believed to have been used during the Sand Creek Massacre (Dawson Nd.; Nankivell 1935: 466). Equipment seems mostly to have consisted of old and non-standard rifles and manufactured paper cartridge ammunition in .38, .54. and .69 calibers. No evidence was located to suggest that the federal government provided uniforms, tents, tack, or other equipment to the militias or Company D. When the company left Fort Chambers for Valley Station (now known as Sterling) in northeast Colorado on September 16, 1864, the soldiers were transported by Mule team due to a lack of available horses (Campbell 2006; Dawson nd; Colorado State Archives, 1864b). Company D later participated in an attack of Cheyenne people camped in northeast Colorado near Sterling on Oct. 9, 1864 (Bixby, p. 398). The Company killed and mutilated several women, men and children. A Company D soldier who would later participate in the Sand Creek Massacre denounced the murders and said the general sentiment among Company D soldiers “was strongly in opposition to my view of it”(Crifasi, 2015: 142).

Company D later participated in the barbaric massacre of peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho people at Sand Creek on Nov. 29, 1864. Despite having participated in horrific atrocities, members of Company D received a heroes' welcome upon their return home (Bixby, p. 399; Coel, 2000: 291).

Like others in the state, Boulder community members continued to wrongly call the horrific atrocities committed at Sand Creek Massacre a “battle” for more than 100 years. (Limerick, 1987: 3) Men who participated in the Sand Creek Massacre also – wrongly – called their surprise attack and murder of Cheyenne People on Oct. 9, 1864, the “Battle of Buffalo Springs” (Crifasi, 2015: 142).

The City of Boulder recognizes that the history of Fort Chambers and a marker that was on the property are local legacies of American-European colonization that violently exiled Indigenous Peoples from their homelands and are a direct, community connection to the Sand Creek Massacre. The city also acknowledges that the participation of community members in the massacre has caused intergenerational trauma for Indigenous Peoples and Nations.

City staff appreciate the opportunity to listen and learn from Tribal Representatives to help our community learn about events that led Boulder-area men to participate in the Sand Creek Massacre and how the legacy of the massacre still affects Arapaho and Cheyenne communities today.

The Fort Chambers Marker

A historic marker was created in the late 1950s and paid for by the granddaughter of George Chambers. The marker was made from stone taken from Valmont Butte and installed on the property by the Boulder Historical Society. This marker inaccurately interprets the history of the site (there was no coordinated “Indian uprising” or evidence to support that claim).

The stone marker was removed from the site and placed in temporary storage on May 11, 2023. The city removed the marker, with support from Arapaho and Cheyenne Nation Tribal Representatives, because it inaccurately states that Fort Chambers was used in an “Indian Uprising” in 1864. The city acknowledges it is a false claim because Arapaho and Cheyenne leaders sought peace in the fall of 1864 and Arapaho and Cheyenne Peoples camped at Sand Creek had been promised protection of the U.S. Army. Exaggerated and false claims of coordinated Indigenous violence helped fan anti-Indigenous hatred in Colorado during the summer and fall of 1864.

As part of the development of the Fort Chambers / Poor Farm Site Management Plan, the City of Boulder is working with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, the Northern Arapaho Tribe and the Northern Cheyenne Tribe to determine the fate of this marker, which may include reinterpreting the marker to accurately describe Boulder’s role in the Sand Creek Massacre.

Inconclusive Results

On October 2, 2021, City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks conducted a magnetometry survey (an investigation that detects past ground disturbance) in an area to the southeast of the main house. The area has been identified as the most probable location of Fort Chambers based on aerial photographs, historical images, and other archival materials. This initial survey was inconclusive but showed an anomaly in the southwestern corner of the search area that roughly corresponded with a label found on a 1914 county map that reads “Ruins of old Indian fort”. A second magnetometry survey conducted in 2022 was also inconclusive. Indications of the fort's remains or artifacts associated with Company D have not been found on the property.

To learn more, the City of Boulder encourages community members to listen, read and understand stories and information provided by Arapaho and Cheyenne People themselves:

The Sand Creek Massacre: The Betrayal that Changed Cheyenne and Arapaho People Forever a History Colorado exhibit developed with guidance from the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, the Northern Arapaho Tribe and the Northern Cheyenne Tribe.

The City of Boulder also encourages community members to read other educational resources, including:

A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek by Ari Kelman, which “probes the intersection of history and memory, laying bare the ways differing groups of Americans come to know a shared past.“

Chief Lefthand: Southern Arapaho by Margaret Coel. The biography documents the life of Hinono’ei neecee ("Arapaho Chief") Nowoo3 (“Niwot," "Lefthand"), how American-Europeans squatted Arapaho lands and the U.S. Third Calvary’s role – which included men from Boulder– participated in his murder at Sand Creek.

A Land Made from Water: Appropriation and Evolution of Colorado's Landscape, Ditches, and Water Institutions by Bob Crifasi. The Chapter “Taking Colorado” documents the reasoning behind American-European appropriation of Indigenous lands in the Boulder area.