Fort Vancouver National Historic Site

In the 1820s the Hudson's Bay Company moved its regional operations to this spot on the Columbia and built Fort Vancouver, making it the nerve center of the fur trade across a huge swath of the West. From behind its stockade, the company ran trapping brigades, shipped furs to Britain, and supplied its network of far-flung posts.

The commanding figure was the Chief Factor, Dr. John McLoughlin, a towering, white-haired man who ran the fort for years and became so influential in the region's early days that he is sometimes remembered as the Father of Oregon. Under his direction the fort was not just a trading counter but a farm, a shipyard, a sawmill, and a school of frontier commerce.

Just outside the stockade stood the Village, home to the fort's workers, and it was one of the most diverse communities in North America at the time. Hawaiians, French Canadians, Iroquois and other Native people from the east, Scots, and members of local tribes lived and worked side by side, speaking many languages and blending their foodways and traditions.

The park works hard to tell that fuller story, because the fort's history is not only the story of the company officers but of the many peoples whose labor made it run. Archaeology of the Village continues to turn up the everyday objects of that mixed community.

As the fur trade faded and the border between British and American territory was settled, the era of the company fort ended, and the United States Army established a post on the same ground. That post, long known as Vancouver Barracks, served for well over a century.

Alongside it rose Officers Row, a handsome line of Victorian homes that housed the post's officers, including figures who would go on to national fame. Walking from the reconstructed fur fort to the army parade ground and the officers' houses, you cross several distinct chapters of Northwest history in a few hundred yards.

Long before any fort, this reach of the Columbia was home and thoroughfare to Chinookan-speaking peoples and their neighbors, who fished the river and traded along it. The arrival of the fur companies brought new goods and new opportunities but also devastating waves of disease that fell especially hard on the river communities.

The historic site sits within that longer story, and its interpretation increasingly reflects it, so a visit is a chance to see not just a rebuilt fort but the meeting point of many peoples on a river that was central to all of them.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.