Thomas O. Boggs, son of a Missouri governor and grand-son of Daniel Boone, worked at Bent's Fort and married the fourteen-year-old stepdaughter of Charles Bent. Boggs established this ranch along the Santa Fe Trail on the banks of the Purgatoire River, near its confluence with the Arkansas River. The oldest unfortified permanent white settlement in southeastern Colorado, it served as a trading post, a post office, and the first county seat. Boggsville also became an agricultural center with a general store, stage stop, and school among more than twenty structures. After the Santa Fe Railroad built two miles north, Las Animas replaced Boggsville as the county seat.
Abandoned in the mid-1890s, the 110-acre townsite is now undergoing restoration as a historical park operated by the Pioneer Historical Society of Bent County. Archaeological and historical research conducted in consultation with Long Hoeft Architects has been used to restore and re-create the adobe Boggs House (1866) and a wing of the Prowers House (1867). These Territorial Style dwellings have Greek Revival details and lines painted on the adobe to suggest formal stone construction. Plans call for re-creating Kit Carson's last house, the pioneer school, sheep quarters, a general store, and other structures of this pioneer outpost along the Santa Fe Trail.