Fort Vancouver Cultural Landscape Report

Site
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Fort Plain (continued)

Orchard

As mentioned above, it appears that fruit trees were planted in the garden from the time of its establishment, probably 1829. Trees of some sort can be seen in the garden in illustrations, beginning with the painting attributed to Stanley, 1846-47, and continuing through an 1860 Boundary Commission photograph looking north towards the army garrison, and fruit trees in the garden are mentioned frequently in the historic literature of the 1830s. It is unknown when the site labeled "orchard" on the 1844 stockade area map was first planted, although it seems quite likely it was established by the late 1830s, since by 1841 Brackenridge noted the presence of four to five hundred apple trees. It is also not known if the orchard was planted in successive years, as new seedlings were ready for planting, or if it was established all at once.

The enclosed area in which trees are indicated within the "orchard" on the 1844 stockade area map is about 540 by 600 feet, or about 7.4 acres. [610] The map indicates a set back east, from the edge of the "river road," and this setback seems to be consistently shown in later illustrations. The map also shows that the trees were not planted south of the northwest corner of the stockade, but this is at odds with most of the 1854-55 illustrations, which show that trees were planted west of the west stockade wall, almost to the south corner. The 1851 Gibbs sketch looking towards the stockade from the village and the painting attributed to Stanley, however, seem to agree with the 1844 map, showing trees planted north, but not south of the stockade's northwest corner. It is possible--but not probable--the trees south of the northwest corner were planted after 1851; labor was scarce at the post by that time, and all indications are that all agricultural activity at the farm was beginning to slow down. The 1846 Covington stockade area map indicates only that the orchard area was "cultivated." In describing army activities in the late 1850s, one witness to the British and American Joint Commission referred to the orchard site as the "new" or "young" orchard. seems possible, given this reference and the sequence of illustrations and maps, that the orchard site was referred to as the "new" or "young" orchard, to distinguish it from the orchard in the garden, and that it was here that seedlings were set out, in some quantity, year after year, after the area was established. Perhaps trees are not seen south of the bastion in the Stanley painting, because at that time they were too small--and young--to be illustrated.

In 1838 George Roberts' Thermometrical Register for Fort Vancouver included notes on apple, pear and peach trees blossoming, but, oddly no mention of the other trees known to have existed in the garden by that time, for example, the figs, citrus, pomegranates, or plums. Roberts was in charge of "Outdoor Work," between 1838 and 1842, yet it is known William Tolmie was in charge of horticultural operations that spring, and Farquhar McDonald had taken William Bruce's place as gardener. [611] The bulk of Robert's Register is given over to observations regarding events affecting native plants, for example, "Dogwood trees in full blossom," or "Wild tare in blossom,"and references to field crops ("Clover in blossom," "Spring barley in."). There are a very few references to the garden. Perhaps the Outdoor Work consisted of supervision of the field crops and the "orchard," while the horticultural activities of the garden were administered by Tolmie, Farquhar, and others. If this were so, then it might indicate the orchard consisted of apples, pears and peach trees, while the other varieties of fruit trees noted to 1838, in addition to some apples, pears and peaches, were planted in the garden. [612]

American T.J. Farnham visited the fort in 1839 and later wrote: "The gardener, too, is singing out his honest satisfaction, as he surveys from the north gate, ten acres of apple-trees, laden with fruit, his bowers of grape-vines, his beds of vegetables and flowers." [613] Farnham is the first observer to make a distinction, however indirect, between the apple trees and other areas of the garden. He is also the first to approximate the combined acreage of the garden and orchard, as indicated on the 1844 stockade area map. Perhaps by then the orchard had become the distinct entity from the garden as indicated in the 1844 stockade area map.

Certainly by 1841 an orchard had been in existence for several years, for William D. Brackenridge, with the Exploring Expedition, 1 September 1841, observed: "...Dr. M.Loughlin, who in the most friendly manner showed me round his gardens, under the keeping of Mr. Bruce, a Scotch Highlander by birth. The Apple Trees bore a remarkable heavy crop of fruit and were invariably in a healthy Condition, there were from 4 to 500 of these in a bearing state, and with the exception of a few approved varieties imported from England the whole stock has been raised from Seeds at Vancouver, and to my taste the majority were better adapted for baking than for a dessert, but in a new Country certainly a great acquisition." [614] Four to five hundred apple trees could just about fit in the approximately six or so acres of ground dedicated to the garden--excluding the two acres of the west bed--or path--shown on the 1844 map, if planted on twenty foot centers, but that would leave very little room for the "extensive beds" of vegetables and other plants and trees noted by the post's visitors. The same number of trees would fit quite comfortably in any number of common orchard configurations in the almost seven and one-half acres to the west of the garden, where the orchard is depicted on the 1844 stockade area map. If the trees mentioned by Brackenridge were in the orchard---as distinct from the garden--then, because they were bearing, they would have had to have been planted at least two or three years earlier, or around 1837-38. As noted earlier, Samuel Parker and Henry Spalding in 1834 and 1836 respectively, noted that the garden consisted of about five acres, and neither mention a separate orchard, which may indicate planting in the orchard area occurred after Spalding's visit, or in 1837-38.

Brackenridge's observations raise another issue: the varieties of the fruit trees. Pickering claims Brackenridge saw: "..Amygdalus Persica, the peach; Armeniaca vulgaris, the apricot; Prunus domestica, the European plum; Prunus cerasus, the European or the common garden cherry..."although it is not clear whether these were seen in the garden or the orchard. [615] Brackenridge is very clear about most of the apple trees, at least, being raised as seedlings on the farm. Later, in 1849, George Gibbs said the apple trees were "natural and not grafted trees." [616] Also, Henry Atkinson Tuzo, a doctor in the employment of the Hudson's Bay Company, at Fort Vancouver from 1853 to 1859, was asked during his testimony on behalf of the Company in 1865 if it wasn't true that the orchard was "...of seedling varieties of fruit, and of little or no value after the introduction of the grafted and cultivated kinds?" He responded that he presumed "...there was no grafted fruit in the country at the time the orchard was laid out; the fruit was the best of its kind, but not so valuable as the cultivated varieties." [617]

On the other hand, John Dunn, a postmaster at Fort Vancouver from at least 1836 through 1838, when he left, said the apple trees were dwarfs: this does coincide with the approximate period when the orchard, as distinct from the garden, may have been established. If some, or all trees in the orchard were dwarf varieties, then the issue arises regarding where the the dwarf rootstock was obtained, and when, and also indicates that at least some cuttings must have been grafted onto dwarf rootstock in order to obtain the dwarf trees. The Horticultural Society of London was one possible source for any dwarfing rootstock. However, the only known documented evidence of trees of any kind arriving from the Horticultural Society of London at Fort Vancouver occurs in 1839, when gardener William Bruce arrived back at the post after his sojourn in England with plants and seeds given the Company by Joseph Paxton. This post-dates Dunn's stay at the fort; one historian has observed that Dunn's description of the post in his book, The Oregon Territory, published in 1845, relied on others' observations. [618] We know that Tolmie may have brought some grafted fruit trees from Scotland back with him to Fort Vancouver in 1842, but this also post-dates Dunn's stay at the fort. [619]

Nathaniel Wyeth recorded in 1835, "...grafted and planted apples..." at his establishment, Fort William, on Sauvie Island, which later came under the control of Fort Vancouver, but other than Dunn's statement, contracted by Gibbs and Tuzo, there is no direct evidence as of this writing, that apple trees were grafted in the orchard next to the stockade. [620] By the 1850s some Americans with particular interests in horticulture were at least grafting trees onto hardy, if not dwarf, rootstock. John Minto said that in 1853 "I had planted a small apple orchard of two year old seedlings in 1850." These seedlings, he said, were grafts: he had met Alfred Santon, who "...had charge of a branch of the fruit nursery of Luelling & Meek--and he kindly showed me how to set a side graft. I purchased trees of the varieties of fruit after a close study of Johnsons Dictionary of Gardening Americanised by D. Landbeth of Philadelphia. With all the available young wood from trees so purchased I had specimens in some cases the first year from the graft in having blossom buds from the parent tree." [621] But Luelling and Meek did not arrive with Henderson Luelling stock of grafted year-old seedlings in Oregon until 1847, when Luelling established a nursery north of Milwaukee, Oregon. William Barlow, who arrived in Oregon overland in 1845, had left Illinois with a full load of grafted trees, but left them at Independence Rock after being told Oregon already had "as good fruit...as anywhere in the world. Barlow later stated he discovered his informant was in error: "There were no grafted apple trees in all the territory and I could have made a full monopoly of all the apples and pears on the coast." [622]

The Covington sketch of 1855 and the Gibbs 1851 illustration are the two earliest drawings to show the orchard fencing in any great detail, and they present an interesting question regarding fencing at Fort Vancouver in general. The Covington sketch shows what could be interpreted as two different styles of fence, most visible on the north-south line west of the orchard. At first glance it appears to be the zigzag or "Virginia rail" fence, and it may have, in fact, been such a fence, in common use in heavily timbered areas in the nineteenth century. The Covington fence shows at least four rails per panel, which, if constructed in the zigzag method, would have made a pretty low fence--probably no more than three feet tall. The 1846-47 inventory of Company property indicates the fencing around the stockade consisted of four rails: a total of 11,621 yards of fencing was reported, and a total of 44,040 rails was given. If one looks closely at the fence in the Covington drawing, however, one can see a top rail nestled in the crossing of the diagonal props, after the cross above the rails, making the fence taller than it would be if the height was limited to the top rail of the zigzag. [623] The 1851 Gibbs sketch looking towards the army garrison also shows what appears to be a zigzag fence enclosing the west edge of the orchard. By 1860, the orchard's north edge appears to have been enclosed by zigzag fencing; a blurry Boundary Commission photograph taken from the orchard site appears to show it, however the 1854 army maps indicate graphically that the fence may have been a non-zigzag rail fence. Other sketches of the period, including the 1846-47 painting attributed to Stanley, tend to indicate post and rail or pole fencing was used around most of the cultivated fields around the fort, and that it was comprised of three rails or poles.

As noted earlier, the orchard was damaged during the fire of 1844. A Catholic priest said it "dried up part of the fruit trees," and Thomas Lowe recorded in his journal that it set the orchard ablaze. [624] McLoughlin later said the fire "burnt part of our garden fence." The "line of fire" map clearly indicates fire's reach, and shows that it did in fact, burn the fence separating the orchard and the garden areas, and swept through the north half of the orchard as shown on the map. All illustrations post-dating the fire, with one exception, show very few trees in the area indicated as burned on the 1844 stockade area map. Gibbs' sketches of 1851 show hardly any trees at all on the orchard site. The 1854-55 illustrations show a very few scattered clumps of trees, and some individual ones in a random pattern in the northern third of the site. The Covington sketch, however, does show a slightly denser pattern of vegetation in the upper third, but even this illustration shows a span of open area in the northwest corner, and open space around a number of individual trees. It seems apparent that this area of the orchard was never replanted, although the fence was definitely rebuilt.

The Peers 1844 maps show a structure on the west edge of the orchard, the function of which is not known at this time. It is not shown on the Covington stockade area map of 1845, nor in any succeeding maps or illustrations. It is possible the structure was damaged in the 1844 fire, although the map shows that while the fire swung down through the orchard in its direction, it did not reach it.