Fort Vancouver

The London-based Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Vancouver in 1825 as headquarters of its interior fur trade. The first stockade stood on a bluff northeast of today's reconstruction. In 1829 the company tore it down and rebuilt on the plain beside the Columbia, where the National Park Service reconstruction now sits.

From there the company ran the Columbia Department — Washington, Oregon, Idaho, parts of Montana, northern California, British Columbia, and southern Alaska. Vancouver was the principal colonial settlement in the Pacific Northwest and a center of industry, trade, and law.

The Oregon Treaty of 1846 set the boundary at the 49th parallel and left the fort inside U.S. territory. In 1849 the U.S. Army established a post on the ridge above the stockade, later called Vancouver Barracks. The company abandoned Fort Vancouver in 1860 and moved its remaining operations to British Columbia. Fire destroyed the original fort in 1866. The sources below are the National Park Service history of the site.