People often ask if Fort Vancouver was a military fort. As you have likely learned from previous posts on this blog, Fort Vancouver was in fact a fur trade post. Forts were established all across North America by fur trade companies as permanent locations where trappers could bring furs and hides to sell or trade for goods. And while fur trade forts emulated certain militaristic characteristics such as stockade walls, bastions (‘look-out’ towers), and the presence of cannons and firearms, these features served mainly as symbols of power and might.

Native North Americans started exploiting animals for their furs and skins thousands of years ago. Beginning in the sixteenth century, native peoples intensified exploitation of furs to engage in trade with other nations. The lucrative European fur trade saw opportunities in fur-rich North America, with the French and the British competing for access to land for fur trapping and contact with Native Americans for trading. By the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, several European and American fur trade companies occupied and competed in North America. Some of these companies were the American Fur Company, the Pacific Fur Company, the North West Company, and the Hudson’s Bay Company. These companies constructed forts across the continent to serve as operations bases and trading posts, usually near Native American villages and along traditional travel routes. European traders understood that the fur trade could not survive without the cooperation of Native groups. In the mid-eighteenth century Britain over-powered the French, laying claim to America and its seemingly limitless supply of economically-valuable animals.

In the nineteenth century, the British Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) rose to dominate the North American fur trade. Due to the expansion of the fur trade in America after 1800, numerous new posts were constructed including many in the Pacific Northwest. Relevant to the search for the first Fort Vancouver project, Fort Astoria, established in 1811 by the American-owned Pacific Fur Company, was very important to the settling of the west. It was the first permanent non-Native settlement west of the Rocky Mountains.

During the War of 1812, the British North West Company took over operations at Fort Astoria, changing the name to Fort George. After the war in 1821, the HBC and the North West Company merged, retaining the Hudson’s Bay Company’s name. Fort George was used as the principal HBC base of operations in the west until the establishment of Fort Vancouver in 1825. Learn more about Fort Vancouver in an upcoming post.