Boggsville was established in the early 1860s on the Mountain Route of the Santa Fe Trail, where it functioned as a trading center close to trail travel and became home to several prominent people associated with the trail trade. William Bell, a railroad surveyor, wrote in 1867 of crossing the Purgatoire River and finding a large, well-filled ranch that had only just been built by two enterprising Yankees. The Barlow & Sanderson Stage Company served nearby Las Animas City from 1869 to 1873 until the Arkansas Valley Railway Company, an offshoot of the Kansas Pacific Railroad, arrived in 1873. Boggsville served as the first county seat of Bent County and evolved into a farming and ranching community during the final years of active Santa Fe Trail travel. Starting in 1821, the Santa Fe Trail was a road of commerce and travel for traders moving east and west between Missouri and Santa Fe. After New Mexico was added to the United States in 1848 at the end of the Mexican American War, the trail remained an international road via El Camino Real to Mexico City for freighting, stagecoach travel, and mail service, until long-distance travel on the trail was eventually replaced by the railroad, which reached Santa Fe in 1880.