Major Jacob Fowler was a surveyor by profession. But it was not his job that brought him to the headwaters of the Arkansas River on a freezing day in January 1822. Rather, it was the craze for beaver hats among highbrow men and women in Europe and along America’s eastern seaboard.
Like so many men of adventure looking for instant fortunes, Fowler had taken up the life of a beaver trapper.
With a blustery wind driving relentlessly into his face, Fowler took time out from checking his traps that day to make the following brief entry in his journal:
“Sunday 6th Jany 1822 Went up to the Warm Spring Branch and Soot [set] two traps but the Weather is So Cold I beleve the bever Will not Come out—duglass [George Douglas, one of Fowler’s trappers] in the Evening on driving up the Horses Reports Some Buffelow In Sight the Hunters Will look for them In the morning.”
This simple, scrawled paragraph denotes the appearance of Jacob Fowler on the site of the future city of Pueblo, Colorado.
Today, Pueblo, nestled amid the majestic Rocky Mountains, boasts more than 110,000 people. Although officially founded in 1858 and incorporated in 1870, the site of Pueblo was first occupied by Fowler and his men during that cold January of 1822.
Four days before Fowler’s diary entry, his partner in the trapping expedition, Colonel Hugh Glenn, had taken a few of their men and set out for Santa Fe.
Several days before that, Spanish soldiers had confronted Fowler and Glenn and told them that Mexico had won its independence from Spain. As a result, the American trappers and traders were now welcome in Santa Fe and other New Mexican towns.
Accordingly, “Conl glann and four men Set out...leaving me With Eight men in an oppen Camp With the ballence of the goods after takeing Some things With Him to Sell So as to pay their Exspences.”
Fowler and his men, fearing Indians, built a log house and horse pen and settled in to await Glenn’s return. On January 15 Fowler crossed the frozen Arkansas River “to look out a good Setuation for a new Settlement on the north Side of the River.”
By then Fowler assumed that Glenn was a captive of the Spanish in Santa Fe and that before long his own camp would be attacked by soldiers.
Consequently, he relocated to the far side of the Arkansas so that, if “the Spanierds appeer In a Hostill manner We Will fight them on the Ameraken ground, the River Hear being the line by the last tretey.”
On the following day, the Fowler party built the horse pen on the new site. On the 18th, the trappers erected the new house that contained three rooms but only one outside door, “and that Close to the Hors Pen So that the Horses Cold not be taken out at night Without our knoledge.”
The next several days were spent hunting, trapping, and awaiting some word from Colonel Glenn.
Finally, in late January, news from Glenn arrived. He had been well received by the new Mexican authorities in Santa Fe after all and had “obtained premition to Hunt to trap and traid In the Spanish provences.”
Major Fowler and his small party made immediate plans to join Glenn in New Mexico. Fowler’s group left the Pueblo site on January 30, after spending close to a month in the area.
The party traveled about ten miles west, and on the following day Fowler writes that he “struck the Spanish Road on our left Hand—which leads to touse [Taos, New Mexico] Which we followed and at five miles fell on a branch of the Crick on Which We lay last night.”
Continuing southwestward Fowler’s expedition on February 6 crossed the imaginary line that separates today’s states of Colorado and New Mexico. Two days later they rendezvoused with Colonel Glenn in Taos.
After trapping along the Rio Grande and among the Sangre de Cristo Mountains for several weeks, the reunited expedition started for the United States on June 1, arriving in St. Louis on July 15, 1822.
For many years, the first official, permanent settlement of today’s city of Pueblo has been credited to the noted mountain man, James P. Beckwourth.
In T. D. Bonner’s biography, The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, published in 1856, the indomitable trapper and trader revealed to the writer that: “In the fall I returned to the Indian country, taking my wife with me. We reached the Arkansas about the first of October, 1842, where I erected a trading-post, and opened a successful business.”
He added, “In a very short time I was joined by from fifteen to twenty free trappers, with their families. We all united our labors, and constructed an adobe fort sixty yards square. By the following spring we had grown into quite a little settlement, and we gave it the name of Pueblo.”
But, as can be seen in the excerpts from Jacob Fowler’s journal—and depending of course on one’s definition of permanent—Fowler may have beat Beckwourth to his claim by at least twenty years.
James A. Crutchfield can be reached at TNcrutch@aol.com
