Fort Vancouver National Historic Site ⓘ

Fort Vancouver National Historic Site cares for a vast collection of archaeological artifacts, historic objects, and archival documents that tell the stories of our site. The museum collection represents a wide variety of periods and cultures, including pre-contact and post-contact indigenous peoples, the Hudson's Bay Company fur trade, the U.S. Army, early military and civilian aviation at Pearson Field, and the Kaiser Shipyards.

Our curation facility currently houses over 2.5 million items! Of the collections from Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, approximately 90% of these objects come from archaeological excavations that have taken place on the site since 1947. Others were generously donated by individuals or groups in the local community. Our curation facility also houses collections from other national parks and related sites, including Fort Colvile in Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area, Fort Nez Perce in Whitman Mission National Historic Site, and San Juan Island National Historical Park, as well as collections from the Cathlapotle and Meier village sites.

Once items are accepted into our museum collection, they are protected in a climate-controlled facility, where staff work to preserve and interpret them for current and future generations. Learn more about the museum collection here!

Published in 2011 by the University of Washington Press, this book provides a comprehensive look inside the Fort Vancouver Museum Collection through essays written by Curator Theresa Langford, Archaeologists Douglas C. Wilson and Bob Cromwell, Historian Greg Shine, and Museum Technician Heidi Pierson. Learn more here .

What role do tangible items in historical archives, museum collections, and archaeology play in helping us understand our collective past? What was life like at the Army's Fort Vancouver and Vancouver Barracks in the mid-to-late 1800s? What went on there, and how did it compare to other places?

Produced by the park's Public History Field School, this free eBook seeks to answer these questions and also illustrate the national significance of Vancouver Barracks as part of a unit of the national park system today.

At Fort Vancouver NHS, the National Park Service also curates collections from archaeological sites within the Vancouver National Historic Reserve, from partners including the City of Vancouver, the US Army, and the Federal Highway Administration.

Tours inside the collections storage rooms may be scheduled for groups of up to fifteen people (children over 10 are welcome). If you are interested in a tour, please contact Cultural Resources Program Manager Theresa Langford .

National Park Service museums manage millions of objects, preserved as a legacy for the American people. These objects, specimens, and documents, collected because of their relation to some of our country's most special places, are irreplaceable symbols of our landscapes, our resources, and our history.

Cultural collections - historic materials and archaeological artifacts - are a link to humans in the past. These items help to illuminate our shared history and help define our identities. Such materials have an emotional pull because they are not just sterile objects; each one of them passed through a person's hands, and took on additional meaning because of that connection. Collections from several other related sites are also curated here, including collections from Fort Colvile in Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area, Fort Nez Perce in Whitman Mission National Historic Site, and San Juan Island National Historical Park, as well as collections from the Cathlapotle and Meier village sites. Our care of these collections furthers the National Park Service's mission to protect resources in and related to the lands it manages, and ensure that these critical items are cared for in the public trust and shared with the public. Learn more about how Fort Vancouver National Historic Site cares for cultural resources in the pages linked below.

The London-based Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Vancouver in 1825 to serve as the headquarters of the Company's interior fur trade. The first Fort Vancouver was located on the bluff to the northeast of the fort's current location, where it was relocated in 1829. The fort served as the core of the HBC's western operations, controlling the fur business from Russian Alaska to Mexican California, and from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Vancouver was the principal colonial settlement in the Pacific Northwest, and a major center of industry, trade, and law.

The Village to the west of the fort was Vancouver's first neighborhood. The employees of the Hudson's Bay Company lived there with their families in simple one or two room cabins. The Village was incredibly diverse, a community of people whose homelands spanned half the globe.

In 1866, the fort burned to the ground. What can be visited today is a reconstruction built on the archaeological footprint of the original fort.

In 1947, National Park Service Archaeologist Louis Caywood was assigned with locating the original Fort Vancouver, which had burned to the ground in 1866, so that it could be preserved by the National Park Service. At that time, the location of the fort was an open field. Caywood's efforts were successful, and his excavations from 1947 to 1952 began the process of locating the remains of the Hudson's Bay Company fort.

Reconstruction based on this archaeology began in the 1960s. Today, the fort stockade and several buildings have been reconstructed and can be explored by modern visitors.

Known by a variety of names, including Camp Vancouver (1849-1850), Columbia Barracks (1850-1853), Fort Vancouver (1853-1879), and finally Vancouver Barracks (1879 to present), the United States Army established this post in 1849 on a low ridge above the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Vancouver to provide for American settlement of the Oregon Country.

As the first U.S. Army post in the Pacific Northwest, Vancouver Barracks served as a major headquarters and supply depot during the Civil War and Indian War eras. Some seventy officers who attained the rank of general were stationed here, including Ulysses S. Grant, Philip H. Sheridan, George B. McClellan, George Pickett, George Crook, Oliver O. Howard, and Nelson Miles. Later, it served as a recruitment, mobilization and training facility for the Spanish-American War, the Philippine War, and other foreign engagements.

During World War I, Vancouver Barracks was the principal district for the U.S. Army Signal Corps' Spruce Production Division and the site of the world's largest lumber mill. In 1925, the Army established Pearson Field at the post, initiating a sustained role in aviation history. In the 1930s, the post became the district headquarters for the Ninth Corps of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and, under the command of General George C. Marshall, played an important role in the enrollment, training, and supply of the Pacific Northwest's network of CCC camps. During World War II, Vancouver Barracks served as a training center and staging area for the Portland Subport of Embarkation.

After World War II, the Army reduced its presence at Vancouver Barracks. In 1948, portions of barracks acreage transferred to the National Park Service for the creation of Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. By 1949, the post included the headquarters of the Sixth Army's Northern Military District and served as home of the 104th Division (Reserves).

Today, Vancouver Barracks remains one of the nation's most historic military posts, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Although the boundaries and surrounding scenery have changed significantly, the central core of the original Vancouver Barracks remains. Thanks, in part, to more than 160 years of Army presence and stewardship, this significant place in our nation's history is well prepared for transfer to the National Park Service, where it will be preserved in perpetuity for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of future generations.

While many of the buildings are closed to the public, wayside exhibits throughout the barracks share the history of this military post.

Dr. John McLoughlin was a trained physician who served as the chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort Vancouver from 1825 to 1845. There, he was responsible for overseeing a vast fur trading operation that stretched from Northern California to Alaska. McLoughlin also provided assistance to exhausted, starving American emigrants arriving at Vancouver after crossing the long and difficult Oregon Trail. After his retirement in 1846, he settled into this home by the Willamette Falls in Oregon City. In Oregon, McLoughlin built a new career for himself and a new life for his family. He became an American citizen in 1851, and served as the mayor of Oregon City. He and his wife Marguerite were known for their hospitality and generous support of those in the community. McLoughlin loaned money to emigrants to help them establish commercial ventures and he owned sawmills, a gristmill, a granary, a general store, and a shipping concern. He also donated land for schools and churches. McLoughlin's home, saved from demolition by the McLoughlin Memorial Association and moved to its present location in 1909, was added to the National Park System in 2003 as a unit of Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. The unit includes both the McLoughlin House and the neighboring Barclay House. Park staff and volunteers, including many from the McLoughlin Memorial Association , provide a number of different activities including tours, talks, special events, and Victorian Handcraft Demonstrations.

The McLoughlin House is open on Fridays and Saturdays from 10 AM to 4 PM. Tours are free, and depart from the Barclay house located nextdoor, at the top of every hour. Tours that wish to begin outside of this schedule will be considered when staffing allows. Tour reservations are not required. Occupancy of the McLoughlin house upstairs landing is limited to 12 individuals. For questions, please call (503) 656-5151 during McLoughlin House open hours. If you are in need of immediate assistance, please call Fort Vancouver at (360) 816-6230 during regular business hours. Learn more about tours and programs on our Plan Your Visit site. Please note: Once approved, the McLoughlin House will close to the public as it undergoes a major rehabilitation. The closure will be announced on our website once it takes place. Learn more about this project here .

In the early years of the 20th century, Vancouver Barracks, and its polo field, was a central place for aviation enthusiasts to gather and try out their aircraft. During these early years at the Vancouver Barracks polo field, civilian aviators like Silas Christofferson, Charles Walsh, Walker Edwards, and Louis Barin wowed crowds with aerial acrobatics and feats.

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, the polo field became the site of the Spruce Production Division's Spruce Cut-Up Mill, where spruce logged from the forests of the Pacific Northwest was manufactured into aviation-grade lumber. The lumber produced by the Spruce Mill was used to construct Curtiss JN-4 aircraft for pilots in training, and De Havilland DH-4 aircraft for combat overseas.

In the early 1920s, the Spruce Mill was demolished, and the field once again became an air field, first known as the "Vancouver Barracks Aerodrome," and christened "Pearson Air Field," after Lt. Alexander Pearson, in 1925. Beginning in 1923, the field was home to the 321st Observation Squadron, 96th Division, commanded by Lt. Oakley Kelly from 1924-1929, and by Lt. Carlton Bond from 1929-1933 and 1938-1940.

Among the more notable aviation achievements tied to Pearson Field is landing of the Douglas World Cruisers, on their way to achieving the first aerial circumnavigation of the globe, at the field in 1924.

Another highlight in the history of Pearson Field occurred in June 1937, when the Soviet Union launched the first trans-polar flight from Moscow with a three man crew, piloted by Valery Chkalov. After over three days of flying, and while en route to San Francisco, the ANT-25 aircraft piloted by Chkalov touched down at Pearson Field due to an engine oil leak. The event put Pearson Field, and Vancouver, Washington, on the front page of newspapers around the world.

Pearson Field was decommissioned by the Army Air Corps at the end of World War II, but it remains in service as a municipal airfield.