The city of Vancouver has long ties with Vancouver Barracks, the longest occupied U.S. Army post west of the Mississippi. The city formed around the post, and many of Vancouver’s early citizens were retired soldiers, and many of their descendants still live in the area. Although Vancouver Barracks seems a quiet military backwater today, in the 160-plus years since it was founded, its soldiers have participated in many Indian campaigns across the Pacific Northwest and other major conflicts such as the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II. This is a very brief historic overview of Vancouver Barracks.
On Nov. 29, 1847, members of the Cayuse Tribe attacked the Whitman Mission, killing 14 people, and taking 53 women and children hostage. This began the Cayuse War, which raged from December 1847 to August 1848. Following word of the Whitmans’ murders, in August 1848, Congress created the Oregon Territory and ordered a military presence in the Pacific Northwest.
On May 13, 1849, Major John S. Hatheway and elements of the First Artillery arrived by ship near the Hudson’s Bay Company post of Fort Vancouver. One of the first things Hatheway did was to find a tall tree overlooking the Columbia River. He sent a 14 year-old drummer boy up the tree with a rope and pulley, which the boy tied to the treetop. On this, the soldiers raised the American flag, then began work on what some called Camp Columbia and others called Camp Vancouver. Around the same time, on May 10, 1849, Col. William Loring set out for the Oregon Territory from the Midwest with a regiment of mounted riflemen, 700 horses, 171 wagons of supplies and 1,200 mules. Traveling overland, they reached Hatheway’s camp in early October 1849.
After the barracks buildings were completed, in 1851 the post changed its name to Camp Columbia. In 1853, the name was changed to Fort Vancouver and finally changed again to Vancouver Barracks in 1878. The original boundary the U.S. Army claimed was 10 square miles. It also changed shape and size, eventually shrinking to one square mile. From the Columbia River, the reservation boundary ran north two miles to what is now Fourth Plain Road, and east from what is approximately now Interstate 5, a half mile to East Reserve Street.