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Bent County, Colorado

Historic newspapers, landmarks, and county history layers for genealogists and local historians.

—newspaper titles

—digitized titles

10historic places

—earliest paper

1870formed

5,650pop. 2020

10cemeteries

—CW battlefields

At a glance

Summary

The National Register of Historic Places includes 10 listed properties in the county, first listed in 1976. Most listings are in or near Las Animas, Prowers, Lamar.

Summary generated automatically from the source data on this page.

Newspapers

Library of Congress

Newspaper directory data for Colorado is not yet loaded on this site. Browse Bent titles at the Library of Congress.

National Register of Historic Places

NPS NRHP

3 of 10 listings mapped; some locations are restricted by NPS to protect sensitive sites.

10 listed properties

Property	City	Type	Listed
Bent County Courthouse and Jail	Las Animas	Building	1976
Bent County High School	Las Animas	Building	2010
Boggsville	Las Animas	District	1986
Boggsville (Additional Documentation)	Las Animas	District	1986
Boggsville (Boundary Increase)	Las Animas	District	2022
Fort Lyon	Las Animas	District	2004
Fort Lyon National Cemetery	Las Animas	District	2017
Las Animas Post Office	Las Animas	Building	2008
Prowers Bridge	Prowers	Structure	1985
Santa Fe Trail Mountain Route-Bent's New Fort	Lamar	Site	2016

Source: National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places. Property links open NRHP nomination files at the National Archives.

County formation

Newberry AHCB

Bent was formed in 1870 (1870-02-11) from Las Animas, Pueblo.

BENT created by Colorado Territory from LAS ANIMAS and PUEBLO.

Source: Newberry Library, Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

Population by decade

Census

Bent County population from 1870 to 2020 (Census historical series).

1870	1880	1900	1920	1940	1950	1960	1980	2000	2020
592	1,654	3,049	9,705	9,653	8,775	7,419	5,945	5,998	5,650

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau historical county population (Forstall 1790–1990) and public-domain / CC0 county population series through 2020.

National Park Service sites nearby

NPS

Park units within about 40 km of the county centroid (from NPS Public POIs; no API key).

Site	Type	Dist.
Bent's Old Fort Nationa Historic Site	Park unit	33.3 km

Source: NPS National Datasets / Public POIs. The NPS Developer API requires a free key and was not used.

Cemeteries & historical places

USGS GNIS

10 cemeteries and 0 historical populated places (ghost towns / former settlements) recorded in USGS GNIS for this county.

Cemeteries — 10 of 10 listed

Name	Lat	Lon
Bethel Cemetery	37.78889	-102.96686
Fort Lyon National Cemetery	38.08472	-103.12936
Hight Cemetery	38.02639	-102.7513
Indian Rock Cemetery	37.955	-102.96353
Las Animas Cemetery	38.04213	-103.21795
Little Kansas Cemetery	37.94	-102.82797
Pruett Cemetery	37.71723	-103.2902
The Home Cemetery	38.12195	-102.85019
Union Valley Cemetery	38.09611	-102.95797
Wiley Cemetery	38.16889	-102.74269

Source: USGS Geographic Names Information System (public domain). Cemeteries from the 2021 NationalFile archive; historical places from GNIS HistoricalFeatures topical extract.

Historical markers

HMdb link

Marker text and photos from the Historical Marker Database (HMdb) are not embedded here. HMdb allows non-commercial reuse with attribution, but commercial/compensated use needs written permission; this is a commercial site, so we only link out.

Search HMdb for Bent County, Colorado

Terms: hmdb.org/copyright.asp. Linking is encouraged by HMdb.