Big Timbers was an area along the Arkansas River bottoms, extending 45 miles westward from a point 20 miles east of Lamar, known during the Building of the West for the giant cottonwoods that lined both banks of the river. Some of these huge trees, with circumferences of 18 feet, sheltered Indians and trail-weary travelers, and some still survive as a link to the past. Lush grass, abundant game, and plentiful wood for fuel and wagon repairs made Big Timbers a favored camping place. Zebulon Pike rested there in 1806, and surveyors and traders on the Santa Fe Trail stopped there to rest and trade with Indians. Bent’s Old Fort stood 35 miles upriver, but William Bent maintained trading stations in Big Timbers until 1853, when he built Bent’s New Fort; crumbling remnants of that stone structure remain atop Squaw’s Leap overlooking the river to the south, six miles west of Lamar. After the Indians were removed in the 1860s and the area was opened to settlers, Big Timbers supplied building materials for cabins and fuel for warmth.