Along the South Platte River in the late 1830s, competing fur companies established a string of four adobe trading posts—Fort Vasquez, Fort St. Vrain, Fort Jackson, and Fort Lupton—along the Old Trapper's Trail, which connected Fort Bent on the Arkansas with Fort Laramie on the North Platte. This country of wide horizons was the commercial center of a vast region, where trappers, traders, and Indians bartered calico, knives, and beads for buffalo robes and beaver skins. Built in 1835 by Louis Vasquez, later a partner of Jim Bridger, and Andrew Sublette, Fort Vasquez once stood beside the South Platte River. In the spring of 1840, a Mackinaw boat launched here with 700 buffalo robes and 400 buffalo tongues reached St. Louis in 69 days. Abandoned in 1842, the fort was later ransacked by Indians, then partly restored and used to shelter gold rush emigrants and troops during Indian troubles. Fort Vasquez was eventually reconstructed on its original site from adobe bricks made from the remains of crumbling walls, and Weld County's so-called first court house stands near the gate.