The (Re)Imagining of Pike's Stockade

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Centered Archaeology in Colorful Colorado", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In the early to mid-twentieth century there was a scramble in Colorado to identify the location of the stockade built by Zebulon Pike in 1807, just prior to being arrested by the Spanish and ending his expedition across what is today the Western US. The State of Colorado had grand designs to make the stockade a tourist attraction, and rebuilt the stockade in 1952, designating a National Historic Landmark in 1961, just prior to the passage of the NHPA. Today few people know of Zebulon Pike, and even fewer have visited the small park in southeastern Colorado that bears his name. We discuss the steps to re-evaluate the history of the stockade and re-intepret Pike for a twenty-first century public.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Community Centered Archaeology in Colorful Colorado   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow