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1 <br />1 <br />' Long's expedition ushered in a new, more intense use of the <br />South Platte Valley region that witnessed an increased presence of <br />' Euro-americans, but not the development of permanent settlement. <br />Between 1820 and approximately 1895 fur traders and trappers <br />' frequented the South Platte Valley. During this same period a <br />number of fur forts appeared there as well, including the first <br />Fort Vasquez or Fort Convenience, .located at the confluence of the <br />South Platte River and Clear Creek. The post, built in 1832 by <br />Louis Vasquez, remained active only three years, when Vasquez moved <br />' his operations north to near modern Platteville, Colorado. At the <br />same time Lancaster Lupton operated a post at Ft. Lupton (Carrillo <br />' and Mehls 1992). Also, a number of trappers, including Ceran St. <br />Vrain, who lent his name to the Study Area's primary watercourse, <br />' entered the mountains along the route of modern U.S. 36 West from <br />Lyons. In 1636 A. Pike Vasquez stripped the Vasquez's Clear Creek <br />' post of all usable materials, leaving the cottonwood and adobe <br />structure to molder back into the earth. Within a few years of the <br />fort's abandonment the fur trade declined as fashion changed. <br />Silk, not beaver, became "the" material for hats coincidental to <br />' exhaustion of the beaver supply from over-trapping. During and <br />after the halcyon days of the mountain man, the U.S. Army continued <br />' to show an interest in the South Platte region, sending out patrols <br />to maintain peace among the Indians and further explorers, seeking <br />new routes to and from the Far West. By the 1850s the Army patrols <br />' had become more frequent, reflecting increased American presence in <br />the Southwest after the region was ceded to the United States at <br />' the end of the Mexican War in 1848(Mehls 1989a:26,28-9). The era <br />of exploration and the fur trade added much useful information to <br />' the body of knowledge about the American West and Colorado by the <br />time early federal exploration ended in the late 1850s. The other, <br />' more important, contribution for development of the Dowe Flats area <br />' 32 <br />CJ <br />