Thousands of caravans used the Santa Fe Trail between 1821 and 1880, following the Arkansas River for hundreds of miles across the open plains because the Arkansas Valley offered gentle terrain, water, wood, grass, game, and plentiful bison. Just north of here, across the Arkansas River, ran the Mountain Branch of the trail, and from 1821 to 1846 the south side of the river was Mexico while the north side was the United States. Visible wagon ruts can still be seen in places such as John Martin Reservoir, Comanche National Grassland, and the community of Hoehne. Along the Arkansas River, the buffalo were plentiful and the fur trade flourished, while wagon trains and stagecoaches moving through Native hunting grounds faced attacks. In the Arkansas Valley, Bent’s Fort served Plains tribes, armies, trappers, traders, Mexicans, and Americans from 1833 until 1849, and Fort Lyon functioned as an army resupply point; Kit Carson died at Fort Lyon and Boggsville was his last home. On November 29, 1864, Colonel John Chivington led Colorado Volunteer Cavalry in a dawn attack on a Cheyenne and Arapaho village whose people had been told they would be under the protection of Fort Lyon, and about two hundred Native American men, women, and children were killed in a massacre that shocked the nation and brought a new wave of Indian-White conflict to Colorado’s high plains along the Santa Fe Trail. With the coming of the railroad, several towns sprang up along the trail, including Lamar, established on May 24, 1886, and in the same region historic water-pumping windmills used by pioneers have given way to power-producing wind farms on land that remains a working cattle ranch.