Bent had a partner in his fort and trading concern, Ceran St. Vrain. Ceran was also of a family well known in the history of St. Louis. His father came to America in 1770 and in later years moved to St. Louis, where he married and passed the rest of his life. The elder St. Vrain died in 1818, leaving five sons, including Ceran who became a noted mountain man and Santa Fe trader.
The partnership of Bent and St. Vrain was the name of one of the most important of the fur trading firms. It ranked next to the American Fur Company in the amount of business that it transacted in the 1840s. In time, it maintained two posts, Bent's Fort on the Arkansas, and a post on the South Platte opposite the mouth of St. Vrain Fork.
Bent's Fort continued to experience a brisk trade right up into the mid-1840s when, in May of 1846, war broke out between the United States and Mexico. That year saw Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny as leader of the Army of the West. With General Zachary Taylor driving deep into Mexico, Kearny was ordered to march overland to seize New Mexico and California. That summer Kearny's army of seventeen hundred regulars and volunteers with artillery, supply wagons, horses, mules, and cattle were strung out from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to Bent's Fort, protecting the Santa Fe Trail. Over the years numerous names passed within the fort's adobe walls. Once Kearny arrived at Bent's Fort, he added two more noted names to the roster, his own and that of Thomas Fitzpatrick. "Broken Hand," as Fitzpatrick was also known, joined Kearny's group.
Bent's Fort became the rendezvous for the dragoons of Stephen Watts Kearny's Army of the West, which had been charged at the outbreak of the Mexican War with the mission of seizing New Mexico. Kearny's dragoons were delighted when Bent extended his hospitality by providing whiskey, called Taos Lightning, as well as the use of a billiard table "covered with green baize."
Times and trade had been good to those at Bent's Fort but the years between 1846 and 1850 were filled with Indians Wars both in the Far West as well as on the Southern Plains where the Comanches continued to raid along the Santa Fe Trail. The aggressiveness of the Indians, plus personal dissatisfactions, led William Bent to abandon and partially destroy his once-great fur trading post. This was a terrible shame, as the Bents were known to be the fairest and most honorable traders when dealing with the Indians. However, in 1852, William built another fort further down stream. It was called Bent's New Fort.
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