Bent County, CO Photograph - Buildings at New Fort Lyon, which Replaced Another of The Same Name That was Originally Called Fort Wise, on The Prairie in What is Now Bent County, Colorado.

Buildings at "New" Fort Lyon, which replaced another of the same name that was originally called Fort Wise, on the prairie in what is now Bent County, Colorado. The old fort, built during the Civil War to protect settlers from Indian attacks and promote white settlement of the West, has since served multiple purposes: prison, sanitorium, and, as of 2016, transitional housing for homeless people with substance-abuse problems.

Carol M. Highsmith (born 1946) is a photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed all 50 of the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 30 years. She specializes in documenting architecture, ranging from the monumental to the everyday and whimsical. Highsmith is donating her life ’s work of more than 100,000 images, copyright-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare one-person archive. Out of 14 million images, the Carol M. Highsmith collection is featured in the top six alongside of Mathew Brady and Dorethea Lange. Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.