In the fall of 1846, William Bent, supervising partner of Bent's Fort, chose a site on the Purgatoire River about five miles downstream from here for one of Colorado's first farming-ranching ventures. He hired John Hatcher, an experienced mountain man, and about fifteen laborers from Taos, New Mexico, to build ranch structures, plant crops, and dig the first irrigation ditch in the soon-to-be Colorado Territory. Corn and other crops were planted and the ranch was stocked with cattle and other livestock, but local Ute Indians objected to this intrusion into their territory. One night they stole all the horses and mules and killed most of the cattle, and Hatcher hitched two of the remaining cattle to a cart and fled to Bent's Fort, ending the short-lived venture. After the Civil War, Texas was overrun by cattle while Colorado's growing population of miners and settlers demanded meat. In 1865, Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving opened routes through desolate, hazardous country, driving thousands of longhorns to market and stocking early Colorado and Wyoming ranches. In 1868, Goodnight drove a large herd north over Trinchera Pass a few miles south of here, avoiding the ten-cent-per-cow toll on Richens Lacy "Uncle Dick" Wootton's Raton Pass road, and during the next three years he delivered 30,000 cattle to this region, helping found the cattle industry in southern Colorado.