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Researcher traces ties between fort, Yellowstone

Early fort figure pivotal in establishing Yellowstone

By Tom Vogt, Columbian Science, Military & History Reporter
Published: July 23, 2017, 4:05pm
2 Photos
Portland State University student Tyler Molter, from left, looks at an artifact he got from National Park Service archeologist Beth Horton as Portland State grad student and teaching assistant Justin Junge bags and labels artifacts during the 2014 archeological field school at Fort Vancouver. Horton is now the archaeologist at Yellowstone National Park.
Portland State University student Tyler Molter, from left, looks at an artifact he got from National Park Service archeologist Beth Horton as Portland State grad student and teaching assistant Justin Junge bags and labels artifacts during the 2014 archeological field school at Fort Vancouver. Horton is now the archaeologist at Yellowstone National Park. Columbian files Photo Gallery

There have been recorded links for 200 years between the places we now call Fort Vancouver and Yellowstone National Park.

As an archaeologist, Beth Horton’s job includes learning more about the people involved in those connections.

It’s appropriate, because Horton has followed the same path many of those figures took between Fort Vancouver and Yellowstone. She left the national historic site about a year ago to become archaeologist at Yellowstone. She has a lot of work ahead of her.

Yellowstone’s resources “have been used for 11,500 years, ever since the glaciers receded. There are more than 1,800 archaeological sites, and only 2 percent of the park has been inventoried,” Horton said during a recent return to Fort Vancouver.

Did you know?

• Unlike other sites that became national parks because of battles that were fought on them, Yellowstone had been a national park for five years when the Nez Perce War occurred.

The July 13 lecture at the Visitor Center was held in conjunction with Fort Vancouver’s summer archaeology program.

Over the years, most of the research at Fort Vancouver has focused on the Hudson’s Bay Company during the fur-trading era. Horton helped expand the focus to include the U.S. Army, which arrived in 1849.

“Beth did the first academic study of the military here,” said Doug Wilson, archaeologist at Fort Vancouver.

One of those early arriving U.S. Army officers played a pivotal role in establishing Yellowstone, even though his military career didn’t take him there. As president, Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act into law on March 1, 1872. And that established the world’s first national park, Horton noted.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition, which made four stops in Clark County, included a mountain man who was a pivotal figure in the history of Yellowstone.

“John Colter was on that expedition,” Horton said. Colter left the Corps of Discovery on the return journey, and a Park Service history calls Colter the first white man known to have entered Yellowstone.

William Clark’s writings include an account from a Native American who had been in the Yellowstone region. Clark wrote that the natives “seldom go there” and “Conceive it possessed of spirits.”

The U.S. Army’s connections between the two locations was part of the Nez Perce War in 1877. After Chief Joseph and his band refused to move to a reservation, they were pursued by U.S. Army troops as they tried to escape to Canada. The Nez Perce were in Yellowstone for about two weeks.

The force of 600 men was led by Gen. O.O. Howard, commander of Vancouver Barracks. His residence is now a Vancouver landmark, the O.O. Howard House.

Another Army leader was Gen. John Gibbon, who engaged the Nez Perce at the Battle of Big Hole.

Gibbon’s own career path eventually brought him to Vancouver Barracks as commander of the Department of the Columbia. He wound up living in another Officers Row landmark.

“He was the first resident of what is now the Marshall House,” Horton said.

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Columbian Science, Military & History Reporter