Kit Carson Museum is located at Bent Avenue and 9th Street, PO Box 68, Las Animas, CO,. The museum is open all year round by appointment. From Memorial Day to Labor Day the museum is open from 12:00PM - 4:00PM, 7 days a week. The Kit Carson Museum opened in 1961 and operates mostly on private donations from visitors.
The structure once used to house German prisoners of war captured during
WWII and later as housing quarters for Jamaicans working in the fields.
It is now the site of the Kit Carson Museum in Las Animas. The Kit Carson
Museum consists of artifacts through development of Bent County from the
days of Kit Carson through WWII. Information on many people who once lived
in Bent County is featured in the Museum. Visit the first Las Animas city
jail, an authentic one room school, a blacksmith shop, a carriage house
and the original Bent County jail and a stage station.
Christopher "Kit" Carson () Christopher, better known as "Kit Carson," soldier, born in Madison County, Kentucky, December, 24, 1809; died at Fort Lynn, Colorado, May, 23, 1868. He was an infant when his parents emigrated to what is now Howard County, Missouri, which was then a wilderness. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to a saddler, with whom he continued two years. Then he ran away and joined a hunting expedition, thus beginning the adventurous life that made him one of the most picturesque figures of western history.
Because of his remarkable ability for languages, Carson became a translator
for a wagon train to Chihuahua along the infamous Santa Fe Trail. Shortly
after, he became a trapper and mountain man, traveling extensively throughout
the West. For eight years he was on the plains, leading the life of a trapper,
until he was appointed hunter for the garrison at Bent's Fort, where he
remained eight years more. After a short visit to his family he met, for
the first time, General (then Lieutenant) John C. Fremont, who appreciated
Carson's experience in the backwoods. Fremont engaged Carson as guide in
his subsequent explorations. Carson was eminently useful and much of the
success of Fremont's explorations were because of Kit Carson. His real fame
grew through serving as scout for the scientific and mapping expeditions
of John C. Fremont. From 1854 until 1861, Carson served as an Indian Agent.
He was perhaps better known to a larger number of Indian tribes than any
other white man. From his long life among them, Kit Carson learned their
habits and customs, understood their mode of warfare, and spoke their language
as his mother tongue. No one man did more than Kit Carson in furthering
the settlement of the northwestern wilderness.
In 1847 Carson was sent to Washington as bearer of dispatches, and was then appointed second lieutenant in the mounted rifles, U. S. Army. This appointment, however, was negated by the senate. In 1853 he drove 6,500 sheep over the mountains to California, a hazardous undertaking at that time, and, on his return to Taos, was appointed Indian agent in New Mexico. During this appointment he was largely instrumental in bringing about the treaties between the United States and the Indians. In 1861, Carson began the final stage of his career as a military officer, first in the Civil War and later in the army campaigns of the Indian Wars. Kit Carson was truly one of America's great frontiersmen.
He was an instinctive judge of character, and, knowing the Indians so thoroughly, his cool judgment and wisdom in dealing with them, even under the most trying circumstances, enabled him to render important services to the U.S. government. During the civil war he repeatedly rendered great service to the government in Colorado, New Mexico and the Indian territory, and was made a brigadier-general for his meritorious conduct. At its close, he resumed his duties as Indian agent. In this relation to the Indians he visited Washington, in the winter and early spring of 1868, in company with a deputation of the red men, and made a tour of several of the northern and eastern states. Unlike most of the trappers and guides, General Carson was a man of remarkable modesty, and in conversation never boasted of his own achievements.
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