Fort Vancouver

This board stands at a rest area a dozen miles north of the fort, and its dates leave out fourteen years. The Hudson's Bay Company did not leave when the 1846 treaty drew the line at the 49th parallel. It went on trading here on American soil, and the Army arrived beside it on May 13, 1849, not 1848, rented company buildings and built quarters on the hill above. The company withdrew to Victoria in June 1860. By 1866 the Army had pulled down and burned what was left of the stockade the board describes.

What the plaque says

Fort Vancouver Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Vancouver in 1824 within the area of present-day Vancouver, 83 nautical miles from the Pacific Ocean. Forty wooden buildings were enclosed within a 20-foot high log palisade. Until the treaty of 1846 set the international boundary at the 49th parallel, this fort supplied Hudson's Bay Company posts west of the Rocky Mountains. The fort became part of the U.S. military system in 1848 as Columbia Barracks, later changed to Vancouver Barracks. Vancouver is recognized as the oldest settlement in the state. Erected by - Historical Sites and Markers Commission State Highway Commission

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Vancouver Village — 12 mi
  The workers' town outside the Hudson's Bay Company stockade, where Hawaiian, Iroquois, French-Canadian, Scots and Native families lived side by side.
• Vanport — 14 mi
  Briefly Oregon's second-largest city, built in about 110 days for Kaiser's shipyard workers, washed away in an afternoon in 1948, and later renamed out of existence.
• Vista House at Crown Point — 28 mi
  A rest stop on a basalt point 733 feet above the Columbia, budgeted at $12,000, finished for about $100,000, and mocked for years as Oregon's most expensive outhouse.

More markers nearby

• Finn Hall — 10.0 mi
• Thomas McKay — 10 mi
• Vanport — 14 mi
• The Willamette Stone — 19 mi