Fort Vancouver National Historic Site: Cultural Landscape Report, Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, National Park Service

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The Fort Vancouver National Historic Site was established as Fort Vancouver National Monument on June 19, 1948, to preserve the site of the old HBC stockade in current-day Vancouver, Washington. Archeological investigations had confirmed the 19th-century location of the HBC Pacific Northwest headquarters along the north bank of the Columbia River. These findings spurred Congress to formally recognize and preserve this intact archeological site as a unit of the national park system and to interpret the history of the HBC fur trading post. In addition to the stockade site, the national monument also protected other historical features in the area, including the historic parade ground of the US Army post that was established during the latter years of the HBC period. It is important to note that indigenous peoples used the landscape where the National Historic Site is located for generations prior to the arrival of the HBC or the US Army. The location was important to indigenous people for accessing the Columbia River, foraging, and as a trading post, among other reasons. In 1961, the park was redesignated Fort Vancouver National Historic Site and its boundaries were significantly expanded to include additional historic features, such as portions of the multicultural, colonial fur trade-era Village that supported Fort Vancouver proper and the East and South sections of Vancouver Barracks (these properties were eventually relinquished in 2012 through the Base Realignment and Closure Act process). Since the 1960s, the National Park Service (NPS) has pursued ongoing reconstruction of select HBC-era structures and landscape features as an essential means of interpreting the history of the site. Fort Vancouver National Historic Site encompasses two park units located in Vancouver, Washington and Oregon City, Oregon. The almost 209-acre National Historic Site represents a complex and multi-layered history of the Pacific Northwest. It includes landscapes developed by the HBC, the US Army, Oregon City, and the NPS. The majority of the National Historic Site is located in Vancouver, Washington, along the north bank of the Columbia River, within the physiographic zone of the Portland/Vancouver Basin. The site is nestled into the northern most section of the Willamette Valley lowlands, a narrow area between the Klamath Mountains to the south, the Coast Range to the west, and the Cascade Mountains to the east and north. The landscape is associated with mixed coniferous/deciduous forests and interspersed with large clearings of prairie terraces. The Fort Vancouver Unit occupies a series of broad, relatively flat river plateaus above the north bank of the Columbia River. The City of Vancouver developed around the former military post, seeing bursts in population and industrial development during the inter-war and post-World War II periods. The .63-acre McLoughlin House unit lies on the east bank of the Willamette River, just above Willamette Falls, in Oregon City. The topography of Oregon City includes three terraces that rise above the river, creating an elevation range from about 50 feet above sea level at the riverbank to more than 250 feet above sea level on the upper terrace. The McLoughlin House Historic Site sits on the edge of the City’s second terrace, overlooking the riverbank and commercial center on the riverbank below. Indigenous peoples lived and interacted with the Columbia and Willamette River landscapes in and around the current Fort Vancouver National Historic Site for thousands of generations prior to the establishment of the Hudson’s Bay Company post in 1824. Based on archeological, ethnohistorical, ethnobotanical, and the oral traditions of many of the region’s Indigenous peoples, the lower Columbia River area supported a diverse and thriving pre-contact population. Prior to the onslaught of introduced diseases, Indigenous populations in the area were some of the highest in the Pacific Northwest with permanent village sites located at numerous key locations from the mouth of the Columbia all the way into the lower Columbia River Gorge area.

Fort Vancouver National Historic Site: Cultural Landscape Report, Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, National Park Service

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