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Candlelight tour illuminates fort’s history

1st Oregon Volunteers will be part of costumed re-enactment

By Tom Vogt, Columbian Science, Military & History Reporter
Published: September 11, 2014, 5:00pm
5 Photos
Mitch Rice of Milwaukie, Ore., plays &quot;When Johnny Comes Marching Home&quot; on a fife as a re-enactor in the 1st Oregon Volunteer Infantry during last year's Campfires and Candlelight at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site.
Mitch Rice of Milwaukie, Ore., plays "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" on a fife as a re-enactor in the 1st Oregon Volunteer Infantry during last year's Campfires and Candlelight at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. Photo Gallery

If You Go

What: Campfires and Candlelight

Where: Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, 1001 E. Fifth St., Vancouver.

When: 4 to 10 p.m. Sept. 13.

Cost: Free.

Information: http://1.usa.gov/1Bq3Sfx

More than 150 volunteers, including — appropriately — the 1st Oregon Volunteers, will be part of Fort Vancouver’s largest annual costumed re-enactment Sept. 13.

The 31st edition of Campfires and Candlelight will offer presentations and interactive events from 4 to 10 p.m. at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, 1001 E. Fifth St.

Since the stockade usually closes its gates at 5 p.m. during the summer (and 4 p.m. in the winter), the annual September re-enactment is a rare opportunity for visitors to walk the fort’s grounds and tour its reconstructed buildings by lantern light.

If You Go

&#8226; What: Campfires and Candlelight

&#8226; Where: Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, 1001 E. Fifth St., Vancouver.

&#8226; When: 4 to 10 p.m. Sept. 13.

&#8226; Cost: Free.

&#8226; Information:http://1.usa.gov/1Bq3Sfx

And it’s a chance to hear re-enactors, gathered around flickering campfires, tell stories from the perspective of people who have lived here since the 1820s. National Park Service staffers will be among the re-enactors, portraying historical figures. Members of the 1st Oregon Volunteer Infantry will portray the regiment that was organized about 150 years ago to serve at Fort Vancouver during the Civil War.

Many people are unaware of the Army’s history in Washington, said Mitch Rice, who is a frequent participant in Vancouver-area events as a member of the 1st Oregon Volunteers. People tend to forget that Oregon became a state in 1859 and was member of the Union during the Civil War, Rice said.

“People are surprised to learn that there was an Army presence to replace the soldiers who went east to fight,” the Milwaukie, Ore., resident said.

The group has an alter ego, by the way. Since the 1st Oregon Volunteer Infantry never faced a Confederate enemy, the current generation also portrays Company A of the 20th Maine, which played a pivotal part in the Battle of Gettysburg. Seventeen of them went to Gettysburg, Pa., in July 2013 to participate in the 150th anniversary re-enactment of the battle.

Saturday’s portrayal won’t be that dynamic.

“It’s more about greeting the public than about a battle,” Rice said. “It’s the everyday life of a soldier.”

As visitors follow a lantern-lit pathway along the Timeline of History, they will encounter other representations of key people and events from the site’s past.

They can see a World War II-era aid station, smell the spruce of the World War I-era spruce mill, meet cavalry Buffalo Soldiers from the late 1800s, cover their ears as an Army mountain howitzer is fired, play shadow puppets against the lantern-lit canvas of an Oregon Trail wagon, spark a fire with flint and steel, throw axes, and inspect uniforms and gear from soldiers of many eras of the fort’s history.

The timeline ends at the gate to the reconstructed stockade, which opens at 5 p.m. Inside, visitors will hear discussions of Sept. 13, 1846, when the Hudson’s Bay Company organized a relief effort for the American naval vessel USS Shark, which wrecked at the mouth of the Columbia River.

Visitors can interact with re-enactors in fort buildings, including the blacksmith shop, bake house, chief factor’s house, counting house, carpentry shop, kitchen and dispensary.

Organizers say parking at the site is limited, but there are public parking areas within the Vancouver National Historic Reserve, including the visitor center at East Reserve Street and Evergreen Boulevard.

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Columbian Science, Military & History Reporter