Lancaster P. Lupton established a post a mile from Fort Laramie in 1841 in an unsuccessful attempt to capture the lucrative fur trade in the area. After five years of intense competition, his Fort Platte went bankrupt and Fort Laramie, purchased by the army in 1849, went on to become the most famous frontier post in the West. Lupton was born in New York in 1807 and at the age of 18, entered the U. S. Military Academy. He was graduated in 1829 with several men who later became generals in the Civil War (including Robert E. Lee), but a military career did not suit him. After service in the 3rd Infantry in Louisiana and Tennessee, he was sent west with an army exploring party in 1836. One of the stops was Fort Laramie, then a two-year-old fur trade post known as Fort William.
On his return east he resigned from the army under curious circumstances (although his resignation may simply have been that after eight years in the service, he was still a lieutenant.). He likely thought more success might come from the western fur trade. The Platte River looked like a prime area for a trading post.
His first post, built on the South Platte, was near present-day Fort Lupton, Colorado. The site was close to a fort owned by veteran traders Louis Vasquez and Andrew Sublette who, coincidentally, owned Fort William on the North Platte.
Lupton saw potential for expansion in 1841 and built Fort Platte just a mile from Fort William, rebuilt that year and renamed Fort John after one of the new owners. Trade with the Lakota was active that first year and Lupton’s new post was able to hold its own with the longer established fort, partly though a very active trade in illegal alcohol.
The two rival posts resembled each other structurally. Both were adobe-walled and included a store, a warehouse and several rooms facing a central enclosed courtyard. Fort Platte, on the north bank of the river, was the first post seen by approaching travelers along the old trail, although both forts were in sight as traffic neared the river.
The American Fur Company, then the owners of Fort John, had the advantage of superior financing but Fort Platte had something in its favor, too. John Richard, a Lupton employee, was the best liquor smuggler in the West, according to contemporary accounts. Rufus Sage, an early chronicler of the West, wrote of his arrival at Fort Platte from Independence, Missouri, in November 1841. Most of the supply wagons in Sage’s caravan were loaded with barrels of whiskey “which brought furs from the Indians when nothing else could.” Apparently, they eluded government authorities either through Richard’s adept smuggling or less than vigilant enforcement on the part of the officials.
Despite the brisk bartering of whiskey for furs, records in the Wyoming State Archives indicate that Fort Platte and Lancaster P. Lupton went bankrupt sometime in 1842. He was able to sell the post to Sybille, Adams and Company that summer, and that company continued to run Fort Platte for three more years.
In 1843 government authorities finally raided the fort in search of the contraband whiskey stored there for sale to the Indians. By the time the raid was carried out, the traders had learned of it and had hidden the “trade goods.” Later that year, more than six boatloads of pelts were sent east.
Sybille, Adams and Company sold the post to Bernard Pratte and John Pierre Cabanne in 1845. The new owners finally recognizing that they could not compete with the financially stronger Fort John, abandoned the post and moved down the river eight miles where they established Fort Bernard–named for Pratte. It was a luckless move. Fort Bernard burned to the ground in 1846 and they did not rebuild.
After he sold his trading interests or lost them to creditors, Lupton tried to regain his army commission. When he met with no success, he joined the California gold rush. In 1848 he and his Colorado-born Cheyenne wife Menona and two children went to the West Coat and never returned to the Rockies. He died Aug. 1, 1885, in Arcata, California.
Not even an adobe brick is left from Lupton’s post. It is reported that parts of the structure may have been used in the construction of several Fort Laramie buildings in the 1850s. A marker erected near the site of old Fort Platte is several hundred yards north of the old iron bridge. There is no reference on the marker to that fierce trading competition in the 1840s that spelled the end of Fort Platte and the proud beginning of the winning rival–Fort Laramie, the most famous fort in the West.