Of the three Army posts erected around the periphery of the Oregon Coast Indian Reservation, Fort Umpqua is the most forgotten. The State has made Fort Yamhill into a Park. Benton County has done the same with Fort Hoskins. Fort Umpqua lies hidden on the wrong side of the mouth of the Umpqua River, hidden by sand, vegetation and time.

Google “Fort Umpqua” and the Hudson Bay Post, also known as Fort Umpqua, will usually pop up first. That fort was 40 some miles upriver from the army post. The trading post was already abandoned by the time the army-version fort was erected in late 1856.

Relations between settler and especially miners on one side and Native Americans on the other side following the discovery of gold in the Rogue Valley quickly deteriorated to the point of warfare. A brief bloody war developed between the two sides.

FORT ORFORD

Before full-out war developed, a skirmish took place in June 1851 between would-be settlers and local Natives.  The settlers took up a position on Battle Rock defending themselves over two weeks against two attacks.  After the second attack, the newcomers withdrew to the north in the dark of night.

Later that year, the Army decided to erect a fort, influenced in part by the leader of the initial party, William Tichenor.  Second Lieutenant Powell T. Wyman brought a detachment south from Astoria to build the fort in September.  Eventually, 14 buildings developed on the site – nothing remains today.  The hope for the fort – as well as for the small port village that developed next to it – was to be able to dominate trade heading into the interior of southern Oregon.

In the late stages of the Rogue War 1855-1856, many of the Natives of the Rogue Valleys shipped out of Port Orford north to the newly established Oregon Coast Reservation.

A NEW FORT

With the end of the Rogue War, Fort Orford’s need ceased.  Further north, Fort Umpqua was built as one of the three forts to guard the Coast Reservation from potential white settlers and to keep the Natives from leaving the reserve.  To build the new fort, Second Lieutenant John Drysdale took his detachment of the Third Artillery at Fort Orford north to scout for the location of a new fort in July 1856, joined by Lieutenant John G. Chandler and 36 soldiers soon after.

The southern boundary of the reservation was set at the mouth of Siuslaw River.  However, the area was unsuitable for a fort because the mouth of the Siuslaw was not suitable as a supply path.  Huge drifting sand dunes and the concern of hauling supplies north over swamps and dunes from the Umpqua mouth eventually led to the development of the fort further south next to the little settlement of Umpqua City.

Umpqua City developed in 1851 with the hope of San Franciscan speculators counting on it as the doorway to southern Oregon.  The doorway on the Umpqua turned out to be Scottsburg, located upriver at the head of tidewater while the custom house set up at Gardiner seven miles up bay.  By the time the army came, there remained only a post office and the headquarters of the local Indian Agent Edwin P. Drew.

UMPQUA ESTABLISHED

As Fort Orford closed, most of the buildings were disassembled and brought north here.  By October 1856, there was a hospital, two officer’s homes, a barracks for enlisted soldiers and plenty of lumber to work with.  The post located on forty acres surrounded by huge sand dunes was now commanded by Captain Joseph Stewart. Stewart went on to command the fort on Alcatraz during the Civil War.

In November, the supply ship Fawn sank off the mouth of the Umpqua.  The crew and passengers – minus six sailors – luckily rescued by natives including the new physician, Edward Perry Vollum, and his wife.  The castaways endured strandation for over 35 hours.  Natives and Jean Baptiste Gagnier, the former Hudson Bay Company trader at the former company post, also known as Fort Umpqua, upriver consoled the survivors.

A February 1857 review of the new post added a sutler’s store, small warehouses and a residence for the Indian Agent Drew.

Mining in the interior of southern Oregon initally led to the Rogue War. With mineral deposits soon exhausted, the ferry at Bandon closed in April and post from Port Orford halted.  All communication came from Portland thereafter, multiplying the sense of isolation already existing.

Complicating matters for the men at the fort further was the fact that more than 2000 Natives lived on the Coast Reservation with another 1200 on the Grand Ronde and nearly 700 on the nearby coast and lower Umpqua.  Agent Drew tended to be an alarmist claiming the Natives were constantly gearing up for another battle.

reinforcements

Reinforcements came 18 September 1857 with Lieutenants Alexander Piper and Lorenzo Lorain along with 35 soldiers.  On 9 December another 30 men along with Major John B. Scott, West Point Class of 1821, came to the fort – Scott taking command – bringing the number of men to 167.  However, half the men sailed away on the Columbia on 31 January 1858.  The new year also brought 73.17 inches of rain.  1859 would bring almost 14 days of snow along with almost another 70 inches of rain leading Lieutenant Lorain to exclaim “Fort Umpqua I believe to be the Maximum point of aqueous condensation”

ISOLATION ATTACKED

Edward Vollum spent much of his time with meteorological observations which he forwarded to the Smithsonian in June through August 1859.  He also shipped birds, eggs, fish and skins back to Washington.  The former physician, John J. Milhau, had earlier assisted scholarly endeavors of ethnologist George Gibbs reporting on languages, canoes, superstitions and physical appearances of local Coos and Umpqua tribesmen.

In May 1859, Colonel Joseph K. F. Mansfield visited the fort on a Inspector General tour.  He did not like the fort’s location, thinking the sand dunes would bury the fort within five years.  Mansfield’s predictions would turn out to be not far off.

In the early 1860’s, the local Umpqua Indian Agency began to draw down.  Earlier, the Oregon Bureau of Indian Affairs Superintendent, Edward R. Geary, concluded the sandy peninsula was a bad location for his charges.  Sand made agriculture impossible, plus the nearby fort had a bad influence bringing intemperance and prostitution.  A new sub-agency was established further north at Yaquina Bay as the Umpqua Agency finally closed for good in 1863.

LIGHTHOUSE ADDED

The same time the fort was being established, a lighthouse was set up, the first of sixteen along the northwestern Pacific coast.  This lighthouse similar to the lighthouse at Yaquina Bay with the tenders’ house at the base.

Isolation and tedium were the bywords for Fort Umpqua.  Lorain stayed busy hunting and studying photography – in concert here with Dr Vollum.  A spring agitation among Native tribes in the interior sent Lieutenants Lorain and Piper with 68 soldiers up the Umpqua and over the Siskiyou Mountains to Camp Day.  The agitation quieted by the time they got there.

END OF DAYS

Returning to the fort, Major Scott was ill and absent.  Piper ordered east, with Lorain the only officer at the fort until he joined in November by Lieutenant Martin D. Hardin in November.

Scott died in November back in San Francisco. His family departed for the east after almost two years at Fort Umpqua.  Vollums left in 1859 replaced by Dr J. C. Shorb and his wife in January 1861.   The Civil War removed Lorain in March leaving Hardin in command of a dwindling force.  At the end of May, the Shorbs also left leaving only Hardin and 13 soldiers.

In October, Company B of the Second California Volunteers arrived to relieve Hardin from Fort Hoskins.  Hardin went east eventually becoming a general losing an arm at the battle of Mine Run in 1863. Lieutenant Grove Watson was the last commanding officer of the fort arriving in November.  His force remained until 16 July 1862 when the fort was officially abandoned.

In the fall, Agent Drew bought up a majority of the buildings, dismantling them and moving them up bay to Gardiner.

POSTSCRIPT FOR A FORT

The post had served its purpose.  The southern part of the Coast Reservation remained peaceful with the Natives staying on the reservation, for the most part.  A little more commerce had braved the Umpqua bar with the presence of the military.  The site was eventually lost in pines, huckleberry bushes and sand dunes.  Recently, the Forest Service, to whom the land transferred in 1931, carried out several archaeological excavations of the old fort.  There is no present access to the fort by car nor is any effort afoot to rebuild the site.

Interestingly, the fort was never a part of the Department of Oregon, but kept in the Department of California commanded out of San Francisco. That was as opposed to Fort Vancouver which the other two forts guarding the Coast Reservation were under.  Also, the fort was manned by men of the Third Artillery with a major in command. The other two forts were commanded by a captain of dragoons or infantry.

VOLLUM

Edward Vollum served until 1891 ending his career in New York City.  Near the end of his career, he was considered as a candidate for Surgeon General.  After retirement, he traveled extensively for the next decade before dying in Munich, Germany 31 May 1902.  Later in life, he had been involved in a literary collaboration regarding the premature burial of bodies.  His body was cremated which negated the direction for “a bottle of chloroform with a leaky stopple” being placed inside his coffin.

Vollum had been the medical inspector following the Battle of Gettysburg helping to arrange with General Herman Haupt, the Federal railroad chief, the removal of Federal wounded.

LORAIN

Lorenzo Lorain reached the rank of major.  He graduated from West Point in 1856.  Wounded at Blackburn’s Ford 18 July 1861, limited by his wounds to duty as an assistant teacher in the chemistry department at West Point from March 1862.  His wounds prevented further service in the field during the war.  Her served in the chemical department for nine years before sent to command at Fort Jefferson, Florida and later at Charleston, South Carolina.  He ended his career at the artillery school at Fort Monroe, Virginia.  He died 6 March 1882.

Both Vollum and Lorain are remembered for their pioneering efforts in photography.

LIGHTHOUSE RENEWED

The fort abandoned in 1862, interestingly the lighthouse also collapsed due constant yearly flooding in 1863.  The lighthouse would reemerge thirty years later as opposed to the fort lost to the sands of the Oregon Coast.

The fort abandoned in 1862, interestingly the lighthouse also collapsed due constant yearly flooding in 1863.  The lighthouse would reemerge thirty years later as opposed to the fort lost to the sands of the Oregon Coast.