As trappers and explorers, Louis Vasquez and Andrew Sublette helped build the lucrative fur trade, but by 1835, when they established Fort Vasquez midway between Fort Laramie and Bent's Old Fort along Trapper's Trail and went into business for themselves, the fur industry was nearly exhausted. Three nearby forts competed for the dwindling trade, and the two veteran mountain men, unable to make a profit, sold the post in 1841 for just $800. After failing to collect even that amount, the new owners went bankrupt and abandoned the place in 1842. In later years, cavalry units, stagecoach operators, and mail riders occupied the structure for short periods, but after the 1860s only curious homesteaders and tourists visited Fort Vasquez. In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration rebuilt the fort's crumbling outer walls, and three decades later the Colorado Historical Society began an archaeological study to reconstruct daily life inside the complex. Excavations revealed about a dozen rooms around a large interior plaza, with wooden stalls for pack animals along the east wall, a communal kitchen, brick fireplaces, large trading rooms, storage chambers, a smithy, and living quarters for the two proprietors. The rubble also yielded many buttons and beads, the currency of the fur trade, preserved from long-forgotten transactions.