In a message dated 10/27/2002 2:02:17 AM Mountain Standard Time, NJ-MEMORIES-D-request@rootsweb.com writes: > I am in a very historical area of Penna and about 1/2 mile down the road is > the Swetland Homestead. I'm not a big history buff but it's supposedly > been > there since 1700's or 1800's. Our particular area of Colorado doesn't have that much history, either; the big trails went either to the south or the north, and the gold-mining camps were up in the mountains. But this past April we went down to Bent's Old Fort near La Junta, on the Arkansas River. This is a reconstruction of a trading post that was in place back in the 1830s and thereabouts. In those days our southern border with Mexico was the Arkansas, and it didn't take much imagination to stand on the roof of that place and think of a foreign country being right across that river. It wasn't until the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo in 1849 that we acquired the territory south of the Arkansas, and by then Bent's Fort had been burned down. They had a good staff at the reconstructed fort, all dressed in period costumes and talking as if it were the 1830s or early 1840s, but they didn't stick tight to the time roles. While we were there we took a hike along a trail system that incorporated one of the lesser-known old stage trails from the Wild West days. Thanks to the dry climate out here, the ruts are still as clear as they were a hundred years ago, and there's no vestige of civilization within sight unless you look at the descriptive signs that have been posted. You could stand in middle of the trail and look to the west and wonder whether there was any water up ahead or whether there were Comanches hiding behind the next hill. We've seen some other re-enactments at other places than there and at Plimoth Plantation. At the Fort at Number Four, along the Connecticut River on the New Hampshire side, back in October of 1991, we saw a celebration of King George II's birthday, complete with the firing of a cannon. Number Four is one of those out-of-the-way places that doesn't get much publicity; its heyday was during the French and Indian war, back in the 1750s and thereabouts. Then there was the re-enactment of the Continental Army encampment at Jockey Hollow, just outside Morristown, NJ, in 1976. That was really good; it even had the poorly-dressed militia being yammered out by an officer who swore that the troops were being paid well, even though Continental money wasn't worth the paper it was printed on at the time. And about fifteen years ago we got treated to a Civil War re-enactment at Fort Tejon, in the Tehachapi Mountains along the I-5 in California. That one had Abe Lincoln and Jeff Davis both at it. The most recent that I saw was at Colonial Michilimackinac in Michigan back in May. Since Michilimackinac was a British fort, all the participants were in British Army red coats. This one, like Number Four, goes back to the days of the French and Indian War. The Brits burned it during the Revolution to keep us from getting our hands on it. Doris in Colorado (Up2Nutrix@aol.com) "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." -- Jim Elliot, missionary and martyr