A national historic site in southeastern Colorado will become a virtual reality in the video game Minecraft. The Immersive Education Initiative announced Bent’s Old Fort will also be reconstructed as a fully immersive 3D environment.
Colorado students will have the opportunity to work in collaboration with Stanford University’s Architecture Design Program on the project.
Immersive Bent’s Old Fort with corresponding history curricula and teaching materials will be available free of charge to the general public and schools.
This is a joint project of the United States Department of the Interior Park Service, the City of La Junta Colorado, Otero Junior College, and the East Otero School District. It’s also one of several new activities in the Initiative’s Immersive Arts and Culture program.
Bent’s Old Fort was established in the 1830s as a fur trading post. The adobe structure is also known as the “Castle of the Plains.”
Traders, trappers, travelers, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes came together to do business in peace at the Fort. It was also an instrument of Manifest Destiny and a catalyst for change in the United States.