As you will know from previous blog posts, Fort Vancouver was a British fur trade post founded by the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) in 1825. There were two Fort Vancouvers: The first 1825-1829 fort and the second 1829-1860 fort. The second fort was documented so well that the National Park Service was able to create the wonderful reconstruction at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site on that fort’s archaeological footprint.

The first (1825) fort, on the other hand, is a bit trickier. Not many records of the first fort were made and kept since it was meant to be the temporary location of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s western headquarters. We can infer its general location from its scanty documentary record, but without archaeological evidence we cannot know its exact location or many details about what the fort was like, activities that were happening at the fort, or all the people who were living at and using the fort.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) wanted to move its western headquarters from Fort George in present-day Astoria, Oregon to a location on the north bank of the Columbia River to shore up claims to the land in advance of boundary resolutions between Great Britain and the United States. In 1824 HBC governor George Simpson recommended moving the fort from the south side of the Columbia River to the north side near the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers.

Simpson sent HBC Chief Factors Dr. John McLoughlin and Alexander Kennedy to choose the spot for the new fort. McLoughlin and Kennedy traveled along the Columbia until they spied the beautiful Jolie Prairie, a three-mile plain on which Fort Vancouver National Historic Site now stands, and they knew their search was over. The Jolie Prairie was a camas field, likely fire-managed, maintained and used by area Native groups to grow and harvest a staple of their diet, the starchy camas root. Worried about seasonal flooding of the river on the lower plain McLoughlin and Kennedy selected the defendable high ground of the bluff above the floodplain, about 1 to 1 ¼ miles from the river. The chosen location was visible from the river and positioned in an area amply populated and used for millennia by a plethora of Native groups, important considerations for maximizing opportunities for trade. From historic drawings it appears there was a second fire-controlled prairie along the bluff where the first fort was placed. It makes sense that the two chief factors would choose a high spot cleared of trees, making the fort more visible and also less work for them.

The capable and experienced McLoughlin served as Chief Factor of the new fort. Under McLoughlin’s supervision, construction of the fort began sometime between November 1824 and March 1825, with the area of the fort filling a space of somewhere between ¾ of an acre and almost 1 1/2 acres. By March of 1825 the structures inside the picketed stockade included a dwelling house, two store houses, an Indian hall, and temporary quarters which were likely tents for a diverse set of employees, including many Native Americans and Native Hawaiians. All buildings were meant to be temporary because Simpson intended to eventually move the fort permanently to a location in New Caledonia (now British Columbia) along the Fraser River. Even though the location was meant to be temporary, McLoughlin lost no time in beginning agricultural experiments in this fertile new land. Potato fields and other crops were planted almost immediately, and livestock brought from Fort George were kept below the bluff.

 By 1829 Simpson recognized the advantages of remaining in the current location: the soil and climate were ideal for agriculture, it was a prime trade location, and, unlike the extremely treacherous Fraser River, the Columbia was easily navigable. Simpson recommended keeping the principal western HBC post at Fort Vancouver, and due to the difficulty in accessing the river from the existing distance and elevation, the HBC built a second fort in 1829 at a location closer to the Columbia River where the reconstructed fort now stands.

Because the first fort existed for a relatively short period of time its archaeological footprint is likely not strong. Add to that the large area of land where the fort could potentially have been, the high level of disturbance in an urban residential neighborhood, and the difficulty in recruiting project participants, and the task of finding material evidence of the first fort becomes daunting.

In an upcoming post I will discuss the types of artifacts I have searched for during the project that would indicate early-19th century occupation by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and therefore evidence of the first Fort Vancouver.