Fort Vancouver Cultural Landscape Report

Operations at Fort Vancouver
(continued)

The Mills and Other Industries

As the central depot for the Columbia Department, Fort Vancouver was the principal supplier of products to its subsidiary operations. Material made at Fort Vancouver s shops--hardware, harness and saddlery, tools and other "in country" items--were used throughout the district. In addition, as discussed previously, by the 1830s, the bulk of the necessary foodstuffs to supply the fur trade, the coastal trade, and ancillary posts were produced at Fort Vancouver, later supplemented by Forts Langley and Colvile, and still later by Fort Nisqually and the Cowlitz Farm. Also, as noted earlier, the boat yard at Fort Vancouver was the site of the ship construction and repair. Fort Vancouver was also a warehousing center, at first for trade goods and necessary imported items for the fur brigades and posts, and later for general merchandise for sale to settlers both at the post and at its outlets in the Willamette Valley and other posts.

In addition to these activities, Fort Vancouver was a center of flour milling; timber production; salmon preparation, packing and shipping; butter production; wool production; livestock breeding and meat production. For a time, the post was also engaged in distilling and brewing. The livestock-associated operations--wool, butter, meat and breeding--have already been addressed.

Sawmill

Simpson had great plans for the sawmill erected in the winter of 1828-29 six miles east of the post, the construction of which he may have overseen while visiting the fort that winter. He told London in the Spring of 1829:

During the dead season of the year, say from October until March, when little can be done on the coast, we purpose emplying the Vessels in carrying Timber, either to the Southern Coast...or to the Sandwich Islands...Towards this object, a Saw Mill is already erected within Four Miles of Fort Vancouver, which with only one Saw will give 300,000 feet of Deals p. Annum, and by removing it at an expense of about £100, twenty miles from hence, the the Falls of the Wilhamot...Saws enough could be employed, to load the British Navy. The Annual expence of our present experimental Saw Mill is about £150... [396]

He also told McLoughlin: "The Saw Mill will require Eighte Men and should be kept constantly at Work, as I expect that fully as much advantage will be derived from the Timber as from the Coasting Fur Trade and if you find that in its present situation it cannot produce the quantity required, it will be well to remove it to the Falls of the Willamet..." [397]

A new sawmill was built at the creek east of the fort around 1834; the Rev. Jason Lee noted that the Company was building a new mill, which he saw on September 16 of that year. [398] The mill was powered by an overshot wheel, and included a gang of nine saws in addition to two sash saws. [399] The Reverend Samuel Parker, visiting Fort Vancouver in 1835, noted:

This mill, though large, does not with its several saws furnish more lumber than a common mill would, with one saw, in the United States. There being no pine below the Cascades, and but very little within five hundred miles of the mouth of the Columbia river, the only timber sawed in this mill is fir and oak. Besides what lumber is used in the common business about this station, one and sometimes two ship loads, are sent annually to Oahu, Sandwich islands, and is here called pine to the north-west coast. Boards of fir are not so durable, when exposed to the weather, as those of pine, nor so easily worked. One half of the grain of each annual growth, is very hard, and the other half soft and spungy, which easily absorbs moisture and causes speedy decay. [400]

In the early 1840s between thirty and forty men were employed at the mill, cranking out deals for the timber trade. T.J. Farnham, who saw Fort Vancouver in the latter part of 1839, noted: "The Saw-mill...is a scene of constant toil; thirty or forty Sandwich Islanders are felling the pines, and dragging them to the mill; sets of hands are playing two gangs of saws by night and day; three thousand feet of lumber per day--900,000 feet per annum--constantly being shipped to foreign ports." [401] Lieut. George Emmons, attached to Wilkes' expedition, visited the mill in the summer of 1841 and reported that the mill "... runs 9 saws & I think Dr. McL told me, turned out 2500 feet of lumber daily, employing from 25 to 30 men, and about 12 yoke of oxen...Most all of these men I observed were Sandwich Islanders, their ration consists principally of smoked salmon--sea biscuit, and the pay of each 17 pounds per an." [402] Eugene Duflot de Mofrás, gathering intelligence for the French Government, visited the mill in the winter of 1841, and noted: "About twenty men (Canadians and Sandwich Islanders) are employed at the mill." [403]

Wilkes noted: "The quality of timber cut into boards, is inferior to what we should deem merchantable in the United States, and is little better than our hemlock. The boards are shped to the Sandwich Islands, and we here found the brig Wave taking in a cargo of lumber. These boards sell at Oahu for eighty dollars per thousand. I could not ascertain their cost here." [404]

In the spring of 1838 McLoughlin directed a rebuild of the mill. [405] By 1846-47, another, single sawmill driven by a water wheel in a cistern had been built in the same vicinity.

In addition to the Hawaiian Islands, milled lumber was shipped to Monterey, California, and apparently on at least one occasion to either Valparaiso or Lima, Peru. The production of lumber--which included not only planks and deals, but shingles, rafters and cordwood--was in part driven by the desire to trade for goods needed at the Columbia Department, for example, camphor, rice, and crude opium. Before livestock production made the Department generally self-sufficient, Chief Factor McLoughlin also needed to purchase salted beef and pork from the Hawaiian Islands.

Gristmill

As noted earlier, a hand-operated gristmill was apparently located on Mill Creek near the sawmill by 1828-29. According to Jedediah Smith, it was "...intended to work by water." A second mill, powered by oxen or horses was located just north of the stockade, which was "kept in constant operation" and produced "flour of excellent quality," according to the Rev. Samuel Parker, who saw it in December of 1835. [406] In 1838-39, a new, water-powered mill lodged in a three and one-half story building was built by a millwright, William Crate, under the supervision of Chief Trader James Douglas at Mill Creek: it began operation in May of 1839. It was capable of grinding ten thousand bushels of grain every year. [407]

The mill was used to grind not only the Company's wheat, but that of settlers in the Oregon Country. Methodist missionary Henry Bridgman Brewer, who arrived in the country in June of 1840 and went almost immediately to The Dalles, periodically noted in his journal, beginning in October of 1841, that he had cleaned and sent wheat via canoe to the Vancouver mill, and returned from it with flour. [408] In his journal in the mid 1840s, Company clerk Thomas Lowe noted the arrival at the mill of wheat bateaux and barges from the Willamette Valley, and the shipment of flour from the mill via barges. [409]

In 1845 the site for a new gristmill on the creek was selected by James Douglas, but this mill, although listed in an 1846-47 inventory of improvements at Fort Vancouver, was apparently never finished. [410]

Salmon Operation

By 1830 some salmon was being salted at Fort Vancouver; late in that year the Company ship, the Dryad, was sent to California to dispose of a cargo of lumber and salted salmon. [411] As with lumber, salted salmon was sent to the Hawaiian Islands for trade for such items as molasses, sugar, and salt. By the 1840s, the Company, according to Lowe, was curing about 2,000 barrels of salmon a year for "...the use of their employees and for exportation." [412] In 1841 about 400 barrels of salted salmon were sent to market directly from Fort Langley. [413]

Brewing and Distilling

In 1829 American Henry Bingham reported he had been told by Lieutenant (Captain) Simpson, that the Company was soon going to export beer from Fort Vancouver. [414] Clerk John Work wrote to associate Edward Ermatinger in February of 1834, "distilling whisky has been going on all winter." [415] George Roberts, a clerk at Fort Vancouver in the early 1840s, later said "...As the American traders on the coast sold liquor to the indians the Company had to do the same....There being no bouys, pilots or chart of the river small ships were sent from England & the saving of freight an object, so that we tried to make the whisky a bulky article, here. We had 3 Stills at work and made good whisky from Barley, but it was given up owning to the bad effect on the men." [416] A 132 foot by 18 foot structure listed as a distillery in an 1846-47 inventory of the post, was later identified as being located in the river front area of Fort Vancouver, and was apparently still standing in the early 1850s; its exact location, however, has not been pinpointed. [417]