Milestone a reminder of Fort Vancouver’s layers of history

Fort Vancouver is a story of discovery.

Actually, several discoveries. You can go back more than two centuries to HMS Discovery and the Corps of Discovery. The men commanded by Capt. George Vancouver and members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition set the stage for two waves of Fort Vancouver’s occupants.

Those occupants — British Hudson’s Bay Company employees and then U.S. Army soldiers — made discoveries of their own as they traveled throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Now jump forward to a particularly significant discovery in 1947. It answered a question some local people had been asking for decades: Where was Fort Vancouver?

(Which begs another question: How do you lose a fort?)

Louis Caywood, a National Park Service archaeologist, did the groundwork that established what now is Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. Along with more than 400 other locations, the historic site is observing this week’s National Park Service centennial.

Wide span of history

Superintendent Tracy Fortmann recently reflected on Fort Vancouver’s role in the Park Service and described it as a unique asset.

“For me, Fort Vancouver is a rarity. Most historic national park areas reflect only one event or one person or a very specific span of time,” she said. Fort Vancouver, however, “interprets entire eras of history, including indigenous peoples, immigrants and colonization, the intrigue of foreign governments and companies, all interested in claiming this land.”

The U.S. military was the dominant figure here for the better part of a century, expanding the site’s historical scope.

“Think about it. This place has been arguably front and center on the world stage five times,” Fortmann said. “The fur trade; Oregon immigration; early 19th-century development and settlement of the Pacific Northwest, including one of the darker chapters of our history, the Indian Wars; and, of course, the Spruce Mill production work during World War I; and later, Chkalov’s transpolar flight.”

There is a flip side to that focus, with Fort Vancouver providing a local historical lens to examine global social and economic forces.

Global forces at work

“Some major events that changed the history of the world happened here,” said archaeologist Doug Wilson. “Fort Vancouver happened around the time of the Industrial Revolution. The transportation and tools the people used here reflected that era. A steam-powered thresher was here in the 1840s.” The Pacific Northwest’s first steam-powered ship, the Beaver, arrived in 1836.

“In the first cattle drive in the Pacific Northwest, fur traders brought a herd here from Mexican California in 1830.”

It previewed the Pacific Northwest’s dairy industry, Wilson said. There were other familiar agricultural and industrial efforts, including fruit orchards, lumber production and salmon processing. Community institutions took root.

“There was a schoolhouse about 1845. The Hudson’s Bay Company took time to educate the youth of the fort and the workers’ village. There was the first Western-style medicine.”

And there was even scientific research.

“Fort Vancouver was a base for many naturalists to describe the Northwest, aided by indigenous people,” Wilson said.

Just after the American Army post at Fort Vancouver was established, “There was a whole movement of people from Europe to the U.S., and that was reflected here. Many soldiers on the frontier were from all over Europe,” Wilson said. For newly arrived immigrants, “It was an easy job to get.”

The Army’s ascendency overshadowed the Hudson’s Bay Company’s legacy, and it also started soon after the Army arrived.

Army moves in

“Vancouver Barracks was established to counter the Hudson’s Bay Company,” said Bob Cromwell, park service archeologist and acting chief ranger. “The Army arrived at the Hudson’s Bay wharf, and announced they would stay there temporarily until they could find a permanent site. After the first night, they figured, why go anywhere else? They encouraged the Hudson’s Bay Company to leave.”

When the Hudson’s Bay Company did vacate in 1860, “They literally gave Army officers the keys — and reminded them that the Hudson’s Bay Company would be suing,” Cromwell said.

“The Army agreed to take care of the property, but by 1865 or ’66, there were holes in roofs.”

People could see the ground through the holes in the floor of the chief factor’s house.

“In 1866, the fort mysteriously burned. I think the Army just got tired of taking care of a foreign corporation’s property, especially when they were suing us.

“The fort was lost because the Army didn’t want the world to know it was there. To me, that’s how you lose a fort,” Cromwell said.

Obviously, the old fort wasn’t erased from history.

A fort here somewhere

“Enough people had seen it. People knew it was here. Oregon Historical Society people were interviewing pioneers; people had a general sense. Army maps from the 1920s and ’30s reference the Old Apple Tree as the site of the old Hudson’s Bay Company fort. They’re close, but they don’t know exactly.”

The Army’s role in Vancouver started to diminish after World War II, leading to another transition. The city of Vancouver took over surplus federal property on the south side of Fifth Street, then offered a 75-acre parcel to the National Park Service.

Some people wanted to create a monument to commemorate the old Hudson’s Bay Company fort — and they weren’t all local history buffs.

In a 1946 Columbian story, the director of the state historical society said the project would result in the No. 1 historical attraction in the West. With the proper development, Chapin Foster said, the fort would rival Washington’s two biggest tourist attractions of the day, Mount Rainier and Grand Coulee Dam.

But first, they had to find its location. And that’s what Louis Caywood did, starting in 1947.

“The first two summers, Caywood went to the unemployment office and hired ditch-diggers,” Cromwell said. In vintage photographs, “He’s watching them dig with picks and shovels. You see some trowels. In the early 1950s, they were using college students” for the excavating.

After stockade boundaries were outlined, digging continued to establish locations of interior buildings.

Sharing discoveries

All that digging also provided the start of a museum collection that now has more than 3 million objects. All that recovered history has generated other phases of discovery.

“There is discovery at a professional level, including the archaeological projects and research into historical documents,” said Theresa Langford, curator at Fort Vancouver.

“Our excavations are telling us new things on an annual basis. But in addition to adding to it, we’re doing more refined analysis in the existing collection. We look at artifacts with new eyes today, and specialists come with new questions.”

There is another phase, Langford added, and it goes beyond professionals and academics.

“Our mission is to help other people discover — particularly students. We’re trying to make our exhibits more participatory: not just give them information, but try to connect with their lives.”

And it’s a continuing process, Langford said: “The best thing about the park: There’s always more to discover.”