Tag Archives: Fort Vancouver

HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY – HBC – DISAPPEARS IN THE OREGON MISTS

Posted on by
Reply
Kristi Cameron, of Metis ancestry, presents George Simpson in his canoe - Gathering Hall Exhibit of the Ontario Legislative Hall, Toronto.
Kristi Cameron, of Metis ancestry, presents George Simpson in his canoe – Gathering Hall Exhibit of the Ontario Legislative Hall, Toronto.

One of the cool things a king – or queen – in an absolute monarchy can do is to give away land. So popular, democracies have tried similar editions of their own. One of the largest giveaways happened in British North America where King Charles II gave away lands within the drainage system of Hudson’s Bay. That included lands within the James Bay drainage since James is simply a bay off the main Hudson’s. He gave them to a group headed by his cousin Prince Rupert in 1670. The HBC many exclaimed as an “empire within an empire.” 

Continue reading →

THE GREAT REINFORCEMENT – AMERICAN PUSH TO GAIN THE OREGON TERRITORY

Posted on by
Reply
The Lausanne which carried members of the Great Reinforcement to the Oregon Country.
The Lausanne which carried members of the Great Reinforcement to the Oregon Country.

With a non-Native American population numbering in the low hundreds in the 1830s, the long-simmering struggle for control over the vast Oregon Country began its inexorable swing towards the United States.  Methodist missionaries doubled down on their numbers at their Willamette Mission sited a few miles north from today’s city of Salem along the Willamette River.  The Great Reinforcement brought fifty-one men, women and children from New York City all the way to the Hudson’s Bay Company fort at Vancouver. 

Continue reading →

WILLIAM SLACUM – AN AMERICAN “SPY” CHECKS OUT THE OREGON COUNTRY

Posted on by
Reply
USS Potomac at anchor in Valparaiso harbor, Chile.

William Slacum joined the US Navy in the summer of 1829 at the age of 30. Two years later, he served as the purser aboard the USS Potomac. A naval purser served as a supply and financial officer aboard ships. He acted both as the maintainer of ship’s pay and muster roles but also ran a ship’s store from which a sailor’s pay would be deducted for articles of clothing or luxury items like tobacco, sugar, tea or coffee. Purser positions were highly sought after. The title of purser in the American navy would change in 1860 to paymaster. Today, they men and women officers belong to the Pay Corps of the navy.

Aboard the Potomac, he spent four years circumnavigating the world. In December 1833, Slacum found himself posted as Special Agent of the Pacific Squadron in Valapraiso, Chile. This gave him time to recover from a bout of trigeminal neuralgia – tic douloureux. His posting was subject to confirmation from Washington, which he failed to obtain when the Navy appointed someone else to fill the post.

Continue reading →

MCLOUGHLIN AND OGDEN – HBC REMINDERS LYING IN OREGON CITY

Posted on by
Reply
John Mix Stanley's painting of Oregon City 1850.
John Mix Stanley’s painting of Oregon City 1850.

The Hudson’s Bay Company provided the main source of European influence in the Oregon Country throughout the period of condominium rule shared by the United Kingdom and the United States – 1818-1846. The Treaty of Ghent noted sovereignty sharing over the vast northwestern regions but failed to say anything about how to conduct internal affairs. Into the void, the HBC.

Continue reading →

COUNTERWEIGHT TO THE AMERICAN DELUGE – RED RIVER COLONISTS IN OREGON

Posted on by
Reply
Métis Family in Ontario – photo by Robert Bell, courtesy of Library and Archives Canada, e011156727_s1

Hudson’s Bay Company – HBC – ran things in the Pacific Northwest from 1813 until the mid-1840’s. Then American emigrant numbers began to overwhelm their control. While political control in 1818 over the Oregon Country officially split between the governments of Great Britain and the United States, true economic control from a Eurocentric standpoint remained in the bailiwick of the HBC. The story of the Red River colonists featured an attempt by the HBC to help out on the political side.

Continue reading →

U.S. GRANT – OREGON STRINGS TIED TO THE CIVIL WAR

Posted on by
4
1854 view of Columbia Barracks looking south across the Columbia River to Oregon. James Madison Alden – Yale Collection of American Literature, Yale University, CT

Oregon, California and the western territories of the United States played little roles in the devastation seen in the East known as the American Civil War. In the era before transcontinental rail, the two Pacific states were simply too far away to matter much in the conflagration. To reach the far west, six months needed to come into play, whether the journey was overland or by sea – choice there of around Cape Horn or across the disease-ridden Isthmus of Panama. A surprisingly number of men with Oregon ties did play roles in the titanic struggles. Most of those men had military ties to the Northwest, spending time on duty in the 1850’s helping bring order and stability to the newly settling lands of Oregon, California and Washington Territory. The most famous soldiers who spent time in Oregon, one Ulysses S. Grant.

Continue reading →

ARTISTS OF THE SPRUCE PRODUCTION DIVISION

Posted on by
Reply
Adrian Brewer’s front page illustration for the Monthly Bulletin of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen for November 1918.

Men from many parts of the country and with many backgrounds having nothing to do with logging or lumber ended up during World War 1 at Vancouver Barracks. Two such men of the Spruce Production Division were artists who already enjoyed some recognition for their work before coming to Vancouver.

Continue reading →

VANCOUVER CUT-UP PLANT – SPRUCE WINGS TO BEARD OLD BILL

Posted on by
Reply
The sawmill portion of the Cut-up Plant at Vancouver Barracks.

SPRUCE FOR THE AIR, FIR FOR THE SEA

So went one of the mottos of the Spruce Production Division during World War 1 – “Bill” being Kaiser William. The huge Cut-up Plant was erected on the Polo Grounds at Vancouver Barracks to better provide the needed correct lumber for American and Allied airplane production. “Spruce for the air”. “Fir for the sea” was for shipbuilding, a secondary purpose of the huge plant.

Continue reading →

VANCOUVER BARRACKS NATIONAL CEMETERY REVEALING HISTORY OF THE FORT AND MORE

Posted on by
1
Graves laid out - view from the south or the top of the "heart". Vancover Barracks National Cemetery.
Graves laid out – view from the south or the top of the “heart”. Vancover Barracks National Cemetery.

The post cemetery for Vancouver Barracks became established in 1857. The Army maintained the cemetery until recently. In 2020, the cemetery became part of the National Cemetery Administration – Department of Veterans Affairs – renamed the Vancouver Barracks National Cemetery.

Fort Vancouver was built in 1824 to serve as a central hub of business for the Hudson Bay Company in the Oregon Country. The company had its way in the region until the late 1830’s when American settlers began to arrive. Attempts by the company to meet this influx with colonists of their own came to naught and the Oregon Treaty of 1846 set the border far to the north at the 49th parallel. The fort, left deep in American territory though the company continued its operations. However, those operations became more unprofitable and difficult as more and more settlers came into the picture.

Continue reading →

BLOCKHOUSE GUARDIAN ON THE COLUMBIA – FORT CASCADES

Posted on by
2
Steamboats making for the Cascade Locks near the Upper Cascades later in the 19th century. Fort Lugenbeel was just around the corner to the left.

Fort Cascades served as the main post comprising several blockhouses set up to defend the vitally important transportation corridor along the Columbia River through one of the treacherous points along the river.

The Oregon Trail was a long and perilous route. Perhaps the most difficult section lay almost at the trail’s end as it made its way through the Cascade Mountains to the promised lands of the Willamette Valley. Once the Trail dropped down out of the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon, it followed near the Columbia River. It was possible to float your wagons down much of the river, but most kept to the road leading up and down further to the south of the Columbia. Crossing the John Day and Deschutes rivers were minor difficulties compared to the last difficulty lying ahead in the mountains.

Continue reading →