Fort Vancouver Cultural Landscape Report

Outlying Areas

As discussed earlier, during this period Fort Vancouver served as the headquarters of the Columbia Department, and as such, was the administrative and supply center for Hudson's Bay Company posts west of the Rocky Mountains. For much of this period, McLoughlin did not appear to take much interest in the interior posts of the New Caledonia district, which was administered by a resident Chief Factor reporting to McLoughlin. He asserted more direct control of those within the Columbia District, which eventually included The Dalles; Nez Perces (Walla Walla), Okanogan, Colvile, Flathead, Kootenai, Nisqually, Victoria, Langley, Rupert, McLoughlin, Simpson and Umpqua. It is beyond the scope of this study to assess the development of these posts, except in so far as they relate to the development of agriculture at Fort Vancouver. For this reason, Fort Nisqually, which was subsumed under the Puget's Sound Agricultural Company, is considered from the preceding list, along with the Cowlitz Farm, established as part of the Puget's Sound Agricultural Company, both of which were--or came to be--a significant part of the Company's agricultural program, and which were closely supervised by McLoughlin, and later, James Douglas.

In addition to these establishments, Fort Vancouver's farming and related operations extended beyond the area north of Columbia River. The Willamette Valley in Oregon Country, by virtue of its settlement by retired Company employees and former fur-trading freemen with ties to the Company in the late 1820s and early '30s, was effectively under the control of Fort Vancouver for many years. It was the site of agricultural operations, centered primarily near Champoeg and on French Prairie, the Tualatin Plains, and Oregon City. Under even more direct control was Multnomah, or Woppatoo Island, now Sauvie Island, which in essence became one of the Fort Vancouver farms in the 1830s.

Willamette Valley

As has been noted, there were temporary camps, fur-trading posts, and possibly some semi-permanent dwellings established in the Valley, principally by fur-trading freemen, by the mid-1820s, and near Champoeg (Campment du Sable), the Company pastured horses needed for fur-trading expeditions. By the early 1830s, several former voyageurs had established homesteads on French Prairie, south and west of the site now known as Champoeg. Of those known to be living and farming in the Valley by 1831--Etienne Lucier, Joseph Gervais, Jean Baptiste Desportes McKay and Louis Labonte--at least one, Lucier, had received assistance from Chief Factor McLoughlin in the form of a loan of cattle, seed wheat, agricultural implements and other items necessary to establish a homestead, By 1832, American Nathaniel Wyeth noted that about twenty-two miles above the Willamette Falls, three or four Canadian settlers had "...Hogs, Horses, Cows, have built barns, Houses and raised wheat, barley, potatoes, turnips, cabages, corn, punkins, mellons." [791] A description of the Gervais farm, built around that time, noted the house was a two-story, eighteen by twenty-four foot structure, and the barn, forty by fifty feet. The McKay, house, by contrast, according to John Ball, in 1833, consisted of a single room. In the ensuing years, additional Canadians and a few Americans settled in the region. [792]

McLoughlin later described his policy in assisting former engages in settling in the Valley:

...I made it a rule that none of the Hudson Bay Company's servants should be allowed to join the settlements unless he had fifty pounds sterling before him, as he required that sum to supply him with clothing and implements. He that begins business on credit is seldom so careful and industrious as he who does business on his own means...When the settlement was formed, though the American trappers had no means, they were assisted on credit, and all in three years paid up from the produce of their farms...I would not sell but loaned as I say, two cows to each settler, and in case the increase of settlers might be greater than we could afford to supply with cattle, I reserved the right to take any cattle I required (above his two cows) from any settler to assist new settlers. [793]

A description of how American John Ball, who came west with Nathaniel Wyeth, established his farm, just east of what is now Champoeg State Park, offers a sense of how such establishments were developed. Ball spent the winter of 1832-33 at Fort Vancouver, teaching in the post's school. In the spring, McLoughlin lent Ball farming implements, unbroken horses, and wheat, corn and potato seed. He lodged with the McKay family while establishing his farm, He fashioned a rough drag and harness for the horses, and used them to haul logs to the site selected for his house. The log house and log rafters covered with cedar bark and anchored with poles. His neighbors assisted in ploughing a large field, around which he built a fence, and in which he sowed wheat. Later he built a small barn. [794]

As historian John Hussey points out, Nathaniel Wyeth's attempt to establish a farm on French Prairie in 1834 harbinged the trickie of American settlers, including missionaries, which in the next decade was to become a flood. Around 1834, the center of settlement began to shift from the vicinity of the McKay farm to the south, where Reverend Jason Lee, in October of 1834, established the Methodist Mission, and to the west and north, across the river, where Ewing Young established his farm, in 1834. In between was Champoeg and McKay's landing. In 1835 a small gristmill was built near Champoeg by Webley Hauxhurst, who arrived in Oregon country with Ewing Young.

By 1835 the Reverend Samuel Parker reported about twenty settlers were living at "McKay's" and at "Jarvis' settlement," mostly Canadians. In 1837 William Slacum, a U.S. Navy purser sent by the state department to report on the Oregon Country reported thirty male residents in the valley, of whom only thirteen were Canadians. Etienne Lucier's farm that year had seventy acres enclosed, four buildings and a gristmill, and was stocked with twenty-one horses and forty-five hogs. Jean B. McKay by that year had sixty-nine enclosed acres with three buildings, thirty-three horses and twenty-two hogs, and Pierre Bellique, also a former Company employee, had fifty enclosed acres, two buildings, nine horses and twenty-eight hogs. [795] Another former engage, Andre Longtain, had a farm of forty-five enclosed acres, two buildings, and three horses and thirty-three hogs. The principal crops grown by these and other settlers appear to have been wheat, oats and potatoes. Generally speaking, only one-half to two-thirds of the enclosed lands were cultivated at the time Slacum visited the Valley. The growing community had a blacksmith in the person of Thomas Jefferson Hubbard, who came to Oregon with Wyeth in 1834, and who, with another former Wyeth associate, James O'Neil, operated a blacksmith shop and farm of two hundred fenced acres. [796]

Although many of the missionaries' own supplies were shipped aboard Wyeth's May Dacre in 1834 from the east coast, they also relied on Fort Vancouver for some supplies. McLoughlin later noted that: "To the methodist Mission, as it was a public institution, I lent seven oxen, one bull and eight cows with their calves." [797] Charles Pickering later wrote that plants and animals introduced by the Hudson's Bay Company were found in "the agricultural settlements on the Willamette and at Cowlitz." [798] All available evidence tends to indicate that in these early years, seed for crops and gardens came from Fort Vancouver.

Wheat was the principal crop, which the Hudson's Bay Company purchased in order to recover its loans to settlers. [799] In 1836 the Company purchased a surplus one thousand bushels from Willamette Valley farmers. [800] By 1839 Willamette Valley wheat was being purchased for shipment to Alaska, to fulfill part of the supply agreement made with the Russian American Company, and to Hawaii; in 1841, McLoughlin noted that he expected about six thousand bushels of wheat from "the Wallamette Settlers," as compared to four thousand bushels produced at Fort Vancouver and between six and seven thousand bushels from the Cowlitz farm. [801] By 1844, as Company clerk Thomas Lowe recorded in his journal, boats were "employed" for around five months "...transporting Wheat from Campment Sable to the Falls [at Oregon City], from whence the Barge generally brought it to this place [Fort Vancouver]..." [802]

To accommodate the settlers, who had to bring their crops to Fort Vancouver via canoe, in 1839 McLoughlin agreed to receive their wheat at Champoeg. and that year dispatched William Tolmie in a Company boat to accept the wheat. Some time between 1841 and 1844 the Company built a warehouse for grain at Champoeg. [803] Champoeg was easily accessible by French Prairie farmers, and was the best spot on the upper river for shipping. In the 1846-47 inventory of structures and land owned by the Company, one granary was listed at "Champooiak," worth £500. It was built on the Company's land on the west edge of what became the Champoeg Townsite, and was later described as having been been "...built with posts set upright, one end set in the ground, grooved on two sides, and filled with poles and split timber, such as would be suitable for fence rails, with plates and poles across the tops...It was twenty by forty feet." [804] By 1846-47, the Company site at Champoeg included a dwelling and outbuildings. A small store for trading goods was established by 1843, possibly in an addition to the granary.

In addition to wheat, the settlers raised peas and potatoes which were sold to the Company. In 1840, McLoughlin reported that both crops in the Valley and at Cowlitz farm had been affected by blight, but that he had "...no doubt we will have a sufficient quantity to fulfil our contract with the Russians." [805] In 1842 he reported the crop of peas was not as good as usual, [806]

As noted above, and in earlier discussion, until 1837, livestock owned by settlers in the Valley consisted principally of horses and hogs. Cattle, "on loan" from Chief Factor McLoughlin, primarily belonged to the Company. McLoughlin had recognized the potential for raising large herds of cattle in the Valley, as is shown by his proposal to establish the Oregon Beef and Tallow Company in 1832, a project which London refused to allow. By 1837, however, settlers in the Valley, principal among them Ewing Young and Jason Lee, wanted to raise cattle under their own auspices, and William Slacum's arrival at that time provided the opportunity, with his offer of free passage to California on his vessel, the Loriot. In January of that year, residents of the valley formed the Willamette Cattle Company, and thirteen of them left for California, returning in October after a long overland drive with between six and seven hundred head of California long-horned cattle. McLoughlin, on his own initiative for the Company, helped finance the drive. According to him:

In 1836 we found means of forming a company to go to California for cattle. I took half the stock for the Hudson Bay Company, so that by purchasing a larger number (as the expense of driving five hundred or a thousand was the same) as it would make the cattle cheaper. Those of the settlers that had means put it in the stock, those that had none, engaged as drivers at one dollar per day, to be paid in cattle at their actual cost. Mr. Slocum, who came here in a chartered vessel, gave them a passage gratis from this place to San Francisco. Mr. Ewing Young was selected to conduct the party. Mr. P.L. Edwards, who came with Mssrs. Lee, of the Methodist Mission, but now a lawyer in California, was appointed Treasurer. They brought, I think, about seven hundred head of cattle, which cost eight dollars per head rendered. In the Willamette, the settlers kept the tame and broken in oxen they had belonging to the Hudson Bay Company, and gave their California wild cattle in the place, so that they found themselves stocked with tame cattle which cost them only eight dollars per head, and the Hudson Bay Company, to favor the settlers, took calves in place of grown up cattle, because the Hudson Bay Company wanted them for beef. These calves would grow up before they were required. [807]

Following the cattle was a flock of between four and five hundred sheep, owned and driven by an American, Jacob Leese, who was living in California. Apparently these were sold to both Fort Vancouver and to settlers in the Valley. [808] The augmented herd of Company cattle were in part located on the Tualatin Plains, which was capable of sustaining large numbers on a year-round basis, unlike the river edge at Fort Vancouver, where flooding at various times of the year required the cattle to be moved inland. Of the herd at Fort Vancouver in 1838, 150 were sent to the Tualatin Plains, which James Douglas considered "superior to any other," Douglas noted in a letter to London that if the cattle did well in the Valley, he would keep them there. [809]

In 1842 Elijah White's party of 140 Americans arrived in the Willamette Valley. By 1845, the population of the Willamette Valley was about three thousand, of which about one-sixth were French-Canadians. As noted earlier, during this period the Company's grip on the Valley's economy slipped considerably, due to the increasing number of Americans and the establishment of individual enterprises. Among the contributing factors were Jacob Gale's arrival from California with a large number of cattle, horses, mules, and possibly sheep, in 1842, of which McLoughlin purchased a considerable number in an attempt to reduce the Company's competition. At the same time, McLoughlin continued his policy of loaning seed and agricultural items to avert, as he put it, famine. [810] At Champoeg, a town site was laid out by American Robert Newell in 1844, and an Oregon City merchant, Francis Pettygrove, built a granary and warehouse there. In 1845, a town three miles east of Champoeg, first called "La Butte," and later, Butteville, was laid out by two Oregon City merchants, who built a warehouse there, and another town, Oxford, was laid out a little to the east of La Butte.

In 1844, the year of the great fire at Fort Vancouver, fires also swept through the Willamette Valley, and, according to McLoughlin and other accounts, greatly damaged the crops and cattle at the "Wallamette Settlement and Jallatine Plains" It appears that after the fire, which occurred as George Simpson was already noting the Company would not retain its hold on the Valley, that the Company began to withdraw its herds from the area, moving them north of the Columbia River. The 1846-47 inventory does not list--as it does at other Company sites, any fencing or land in the Valley, other than lots of land, valued at £300, at Champoeg. The Company still continued to purchase and transport wheat in the Valley, into the late 1840s; in 1846 a flat-bottomed boat was built at Fort Vancouver, designed to transport wheat from the Valley to the post's mill. [811]

Oregon City

Situated on the east side of the Willamette River, just below the forty-two foot drop of the Willamette Falls, Oregon City was, briefly, the principal town in Oregon Country and served as the first seat of the provisional government. Its terrain is composed of three terraces or benches on a steep bluff. The first is a narrow strip along the river, on which the town first developed; it later spread to the second bench, one hundred feet above, now principally a residential district. The third extends east towards the Cascade Mountains, where some pioneer farms were established. It was the falls that drew the Hudson's Bay Company to this particular area of the Willamette Valley, for its industrial potential, that later made it a center of manufacturing activity; its strategic siting--wherein portage around the falls for any river traffic from the Valley interior was necessary; and for the salmon, which were caught by the thousands in season by natives camped at the falls.

As noted earlier, George Simpson directed Chief Factor McLoughlin to build a sawmill at the falls as early as 1828-29, when he and McLoughlin visited the falls. He wrote in his dispatch to London in March of 1829: "...by removing it [the sawmill at Fort Vancouver] at an expense of about £100, twenty miles from hence, to the Falls of the Wilhamot...Saws enough could be employed, to load the British Navy." [812] McLoughlin directed work at the falls in preparation for building a sawmill, and by 1832 a mill race had been completed, and timbers prepared for a mill building. [813] Three log houses were erected near the mill site in 1829-30, and potatoes were planted in the spring of 1830. [814] These structures were burned by natives, and development at the falls languished until 1838, when McLoughlin had squared timbers hauled to the site, and a small building was erected to serve as a house and trading store. [815]

In 1840 McLoughlin gave Jason Lee, the superintendent of the Methodist Mission, permission to erect a mission building at the falls on the Company's land, and Reverend Alvin Wailer, who arrived with the "Great Reinforcement" of missionaries at Fort Vancouver in 1840, was stationed there. A missionary, Felix Hathaway, built a house on what is now called Abernethy Island, in the river near the mainland, which McLoughlin considered to be part of the Company claim. McLoughlin then had a house built on the island. In 1842 the Island Milling Company, comprised mostly of missionary personnel, built a mill on the island, despite Company protests, by McLoughlin. This claim, which later escalated into a territorial dispute, and had a lasting and embittering effect on McLoughlin's later years. Its immediate impact, however, was to force McLoughlin, in an effort to protect the claim, to have the town of Oregon City surveyed and laid out by a recent immigrant to the territory, J.M. Hudspeath, in December of 1842. In 1843 the land was resurveyed by Jesse Applegate, and the surveyed claim filed in McLoughlin's name in December of 1843. At this point, the Company's official interest in the development of the site ceased, and in 1845, when McLoughlin submitted personal drafts to the Company in payment for the claim and property at Willamette Fails--or to present an appearance of payment, as proof of ownership if the Company's claim, as a corporation, should not be upheld--Sir George Simpson accepted the drafts with alacrity and submitted them to London, where they were charged to McLoughlin's account. [816]

In August of 1843 McLoughlin had a gristmill under construction by millwright John Fenton at Oregon City. In June of 1844 clerk Thomas Lowe noted that a party including Chief Factor McDonald and Captain McNeill had left Fort Vancouver in a boat to "... proceed to the Willamette Falls to witness the start of the new Saw Mill the Doctor has had erected there," [817] Both mills were located opposite Abernethy Island on the mainland, although the gristmill apparently did not begin operation until 1846. By 1845 a Catholic clergyman was able to report that: "Oregon City is rising. Since a year ago this post has taken on an astonishing growth. Before that one saw only some huts; today one counts there sixty well-built houses. The Company has a warehouse there; American merchants have established themselves there and have erected a sawmill and a flouring mill. Dr. McLoughlin also has built sawmills there, to which he is going to add other works." [818]

Initially structures fronted the river in the town, but by the mid- 1840s, a street paralleling the river's course--now Main Street--and become the principal route through the town, along which were arrayed the principal residences and businesses; the Methodist church, built in 1844, was located on the southeast corner of what is now 7th and Main Streets.

The mills were located at the south end of the town, near the river, as can be seen in an 1846 sketch by Henry Warre. McLoughlin's own Georgian Revival house, to which he retired in 1846, was located near the corner of 3rd and Main Streets; it was moved to its present site on the second bench in 1909. By 1846 Oregon City had around five hundred residents and seventy structures, including two blacksmith shops, four tailor shops, a hatter shop, two silversmiths, the Catholic and Methodist churches, two taverns, four retails stores, the two sawmills and two flour mills, and a tannery. [819]

Sauvie Island

Sauvie Island--referred to as Multnoma(h) Island or Wappatoo Island during the Company's tenure at Fort Vancouver--is the largest island in the Columbia River. Reverend Samuel Parker described it in October of 1835:

Five miles below the fort, we passed the main branch of the Multnomah [Willamette] river. It is a large river coming from the south, and is divided by islands into four branches, at its confluence with the Columbia. Here commences the Wapatoo island, so called from a nutritive root found in the small lakes in the interior, which is much sought for by Indians as an article of food. This island is about eighteen miles long, and five miles wide, formed by a part of the Multnomah, branching off about six miles up from the main river, running in a westerly and north-westerly direction, and again uniting with the Columbia eighteen miles below the main branch. The branch which flows around and forms the island, is about fifteen rods wide, and of sufficient depth for small shipping most of the year. It was upon this island the Multnomah Indians formerly resided, but they have become as a tribe, extinct. The land is very fertile, and most of it sufficiently high to be free from injury by the June freshet. Some parts of it are prairie, but the greatest part is well wooded with oak, ash, balsam firm, and the species of poplar often called balm of Gilead, and by most travelers, cotton-wood. [820]

American entrepreneur Nathaniel Wyeth described the site where he established his post, Fort William, in 1834-35: "It consists of woodlands and prairie and on it there is considerable deer and those who could spare time to hunt might live well but a mortality has carried off to a man its inhabitants and there is nothing to attest they ever existed except their decaying houses, their graves and their unburied bones of which there are heaps." [821]

As has been seen, Chief Factor McLoughlin decided the Company should occupy Sauvie Island after Nathaniel Wyeth left the west coast in 1836, when his various business ventures failed, apparently to protect Wyeth's interest The extent of improvements at Fort William when the Company occupied it is not known. Later, George Roberts said he "...pulled down Fort William after it was sold and vacated to the HB Co." It was located, Roberts said, "on the Slough side...about four miles from the upper end of the Island it was located with the view to easy communication with the Tualatin plains." [822] To reach the island from Fort Vancouver, stock and overland travelers went about eight miles west of the stockade, to a location about two miles below the Company's salmon station on the Columbia, and were ferried across.

There were some buildings when the Company took over the post--in an April, 1834 letter to a friend, Wyeth mentioned sitting "down in my lodge on the ground." There were probably also livestock formerly belonging to Wyeth. James Lambert, the Captain of Wyeth's vessel, May Dacre, reported he had purchased, as per Wyeth's instruction, at Oahu in March of 1835, "6 fine Milch cows, 1 Jackass, 34 Goats 8 Hogs, 24 Turkies 4 Doz Fowls, 1 Pr English Ducks which are all on board in good order." [823] It is not known, however, if this livestock was intended for Fort William, Wyeth's farm in the Willamette Valley, or Fort Hall, another post he established in southern Idaho. Lambert had also received instruction from Wyeth in Boston in January of 1834 to procure cuttings and roots of the following plants, when in Hawaii: "...Grapes, Sugar Cane, Figs & Sweet Potatoes, put up in wet moss or earth that will keep them, you will be careful to do so, & take with you all the potatoes of our outward stock that you can spare & on your arrival in the Columbia River at your place of Rendezvous you will plant the same in a moist shady place near your establishment..." [824] There is no record of whether Lambert was able to obtain these cuttings, or if he did, if they survived the voyage, or where they were planted if they arrived. In his diary, Wyeth mentioned having planted "Apple trees, seedlings and grafted.." in 1835; turn-of-the century horticulturalist J.R. Cardwell speculated the grafts must have come from the Hawaiian Islands. Wyeth only occupied the place for two years at the most, and, as he frequently noted in his journal, he had a difficult time retaining employees and servants. Fort William was one of three concerns he was attempting to operate during this period, including his farm in the Willamette Valley; it is unknown what happened to the trees, or even if they survived. [825]

The Company had cattle grazing on the island by 1838, when James Douglas noted there was abundant feed on it, but that it was subject to flooding. When McLoughlin returned from London in 1839, with the charge to direct the Puget's Sound Agricultural Company--and its accompanying contract with the Russians to supply butter--he directed the construction of three dairies on the island, all of which were, in 1841, located near the site of Fort William. Archibald McKinlay later said that butter and cheese were made "in great quantities" at three dairies on Sauvie Island and were shipped to Sitka, and Charles Wilkes was told in 1841 that 150 cows provided milk which was churned into butter and cheese for sale to the Russians. [826]

George Simpson, on his visit to the Columbia in 1841-42, noted that the dairy had about two hundred cattle, but that another two or three hundred were allowed to roam the island "...with a view to their breeding..." to increase the Company herds. [827] George Emmons, who visited the "Island of Multnomah" in August of 1841, noted that the Company had a large stock of cattle and horses on the island. [828] The horses may have been located there to provide transportation south to the Willamette Valley; the principal road leading south, past Thomas McKay's, McLoughlin's son-in-law's former farm and oufitting station near what is now Scapoose, began close to the island on the Oregon side. Thomas Lowe later said there were farms on the island, in addition to the dairies, and the inventory of 1846-47 does list two granaries, one of which had a shingled roof. Covington's 1846 map of Fort Vancouver and its vicinity, however, does not show any cultivated land on the island, although it does show three structures in a row, labeled "dairy." An inventory of livestock taken in the spring of 1844 showed 124 horses, 4 mules, 437 head of cattle, 44 oxen and 49 pigs at Sauvie Island. [829]

Four dairies were located on the island in 1844: Gilbot's Dairy, Taylor's Dairy, Sauve's Dairy, and Logie's Dairy. [830] Laurent Sauve dit Laplante had worked as a cowherd for the Company since 1829; his name is applied to the island today. James Logie served as a dairyman between 1837 and 1839, when he was placed in charge of one of the new dairies on the island. Gilbot was Pierre Gilbot, and Taylor, James Taylor. Two other dairymen listed in the Company rolls, according to historian John Hussey, were Malcom Smith, and Murdock McLeod--by 1843, McLeod was at Nisqually. [831] Four dairies were also listed in the 1846-47 inventory of Company improvements at "Sauve's Island," two thirty by twenty foot structures, and two eighteen by eighteen foot structures. In addition, the inventory listed two thirty by twenty foot dwellings, two eighteen by eighteen dwellings, and one fifty by forty foot "ceiled and shingled" dwelling. By the time the list was placed in evidence before the British and American Joint Commission, however, the large dwelling house and the shingle-roofed granary noted earlier, were not on the list. They may have been demolished by that time, or, more likely, had been appropriated by squatters fairly early; James Douglas, in March of 1845, had written to Simpson that settlers had squatted "at Wyeth's place" on Multnomah Island, and, as noted earlier, Covington's map shows only three structures labeled "dairy." [832]

Fort Nisqually

As mentioned previously, Fort Nisqually, situated on the bank of south Puget Sound, was established in 1833 as a fur-trading post, and it operated as such until the establishment of the Puget's Sound Agricultural Company in 1839, when most of its holdings were formally transferred from the Hudson's Bay Company to its new subsidiary. Nisqually came to be the principal location for pasturing the Puget's Sound Agricultural Company's livestock, particularly sheep. A study of Nisqually's development from 1843 to 1859, suggests that the post was moved further north in 1843 because of its new role as an agricultural center. [833]

The first post at Nisqually was sketched by Charles Wilkes and the "so-called fort" described by him in 1841, when he visited the site in his ship, the Vincennes.

The anchorage off Nisqually," he said, "is very contracted in consequence of the rapid shelving of the bank, that soon drops off into deep water. The shore rises abruptly, to height of about two hundred feet, and on the top of the ascent is an extended plain, covered with pine, oak, and ash trees, scattered here and there so as to form a park-like scene. The hill-side is mounted by a well-constructed road, of easy ascent. From the summit of the road the view is beautiful, over the sound and its many islands, with Mount Olympus covered with snow for a background. Fort Nisqually, with its out-buildings and enclosure, stands back about half a mile from the edge of the table land. [834]

The prairies surrounding the site, according to Wilkes, were "covered with flowers of every colour and kind...Ranunculus, Scilla, Lupines, Collinsia..." but the soil, he said was "quite thin," and required "an abundance of rain to bring any crop to perfection, and this rarely falls during the summer months."

The stockade, Wilkes, said, was about two hundred feet square, with four corner bastions, which he illustrated in a sketch plan. In the plan, he showed the structures arranged loosely in a circle, and an open court in the middle. A gate was located in the center of one wall, and opposite it, was a the largest structure within the stockade, probably a dwelling, with structures appended to its back side. Wilkes noted the enclosure included "the agents stores, and about half a dozen houses, built of logs and roofed with bark. This fort was considered quite large when it was first established, but since it has become an agricultural post as well as a trading one, it is found to be too small. Its locality is also ill chosen, on account of the difficulty of obtaining water, which has to be brought from a distance of nearly a mile." [835] At that time Wilkes was shown a garden by Alexander Caufield Anderson, the manager of the post and clerk in the Hudson's Bay Company hierarchy. It was located in an enclosure "just without the pickets" and contained peas, strawberries, gooseberries and "salad gone to seed."

By the time Wilkes visited the post, it was already in operation as a P.S.A.C. farm. He noted grain fields, large barns and sheepfolds, agricultural implements, and workmen "with cattle engaged in the various employments of husbandry." [836] The operation at that time, according to Wilkes, included a dairy with seventy milking cows, from whose milk cheese and butter were made; several hundred head of cattle, and crops of wheat, peas, oats and potatoes. At that time the operations were under the supervision of a farmer and dairyman "brought from England expressly to superintend these affairs." This was probably James Steel, hired as a clerk and farmer in 1839, who arrived at Fort Vancouver from England in October of that year, and who was principally employed at Nisqually; he served out his two-year contract, and returned to England in 1842. [837]

With the establishment of the Puget's Sound Agricultural Company, McLoughlin apparently decided the Fort Nisqually would have to be moved to ground more suitable as a center of agricultural activity, and the years 1840-41 were apparently targeted for the move. In June of 1841 A.C. Anderson, temporarily in charge of Fort Nisqually, told George Simpson "...it is Mr. McLoughlin's intention to have [Nisqually] reconstructed on another site, about a mile distant from its present position..." [838] However, due to a succession of managers at Nisqually with varying management skills and other demands on their time, and a scarcity of labor, construction of the new post near Sequalitchew Creek, where water was readily at hand, was slow: some work in cutting pickets for the new post was done by the crew of the Beaver, in dry dock at Nisqually for repairs in the winter of 1841-42. [839] The new post was located south and east of the creek, where it curved to the north, before heading west to empty into Puget Sound. The principal agricultural buildings were erected across the creek, on the north side.

The development of the Nisqually farm and new post took place for over more than ten years, with much of the development within the stockade proper occurring after 1846; the picket work of the stockade, and its two bastions at the northwest and southeast corners, were not complete until 1848. Prior to that time, the following structures were erected in the area eventually enclosed by the stockade: a twenty by thirty foot officers' dwelling (1843-4), with a separate kitchen to the southeast (1843-4); a ten by fifteen cabin for the clerk (1844), to the north of the officers' house; a block house (1844), eventually enclosed within the stockade; a sixty by thirty storehouse (1844), with a press shed behind (1844) southeast of the officers' house, and partially defining the south edge of what would become the courtyard; quarters for employees, a fifty by twenty foot building (1845-46), northwest of the officers' house, defining the north edge of the court; a second storehouse, thirty by twenty feet (1846), roughly opposite the officers' house, and one of what would become a line of structures defining the west edge of the court. By 1845, there were two other structures situated within what would become the stockade, later replaced by new buildings: a potato house and a dwelling occupied by a Hawaiian, situated west of the store house and south of and in line with the store building along the west edge of the court. [840] These structures were all apparently built in the "Canadian Style." Sketches by Henry Warre and artist Paul Kane in 1845 and 1847 show the buildings to have steeply-pitched gable roofs, unlike the hipped-roofs seen at Fort Vancouver. The setting is also unlike that of the open land around Fort Vancouver; at Nisqually the new stockade was located within or at the edge of a forest: both sketches show large conifers and deciduous trees within the post area. The 1846-47 inventory prepared at George Simpson's behest lists four dwellings, two large stores, and curing store, a large barn, and "outhouses" at Nisqually, but this was noted as an estimate only, since the specific valuation prepared by the then-manager, William Tolmie, had not arrived at Fort Vancouver by the time the inventory was shipped to Simpson.

Like Fort Vancouver, the farm at Fort Nisqually included vast amounts of acreage utilized for grazing, with some locations a considerable distance from the new post In later testimony, the area covered by Fort Nisqually was said to include all the land from the Nisqually River to the Puyallup River, and from the coast to the foothills, a total of 261 square miles. [841] An undated map, which must have been prepared around 1840, shows cattle located at least four miles to the south, north and east of the old fort, and a sheep field at a distance of at least seven miles to the east, It also shows a dairy, just northeast of a "lakelet," later called Sequalitchew Lake, at the northwest edge of what later came to be called Dairy Plain; it seems likely this is the dairy visited by Charles Wilkes in 1841. [842] Like Fort Vancouver, Nisqually had outlying farms, which appear to have actually been sheep and cattle stations. In 1843, a Scotsman, John Montgomery, was listed as the Spaneuh Farm manager, located near Spanoway Lake near the edge of a plain later called Elk Plain. In 1847 John McLeod, a shepherd, was listed as the manager of Whyatchie Farm, presumably located near Wyatchew Lake northeast of the main farm. [843] In 1845, a John Edgar, listed as an outstation shepherd, was listed as the Steilacoom Farm Manager, near the mouth of Steilacoom River. This farm appears to have been the location of "Heath's Farm," listed in the 1846 inventory of lands and structures, which indicated the farm had a dwelling, a barn, stables and outhouses, and one hundred acres of cultivated land.

The heart of the P.S.A.C. operations at Nisqually appear to have been located on the north side of Sequalitchew Creek. By 1845, there were barns, cultivated fields, and sheep folds located along the south and north banks of Sequalitchew Creek, as shown by a sketch map by Mervyn Vavasour, These structures probably dated back to at least 1843, and probably earlier. An 1847 sketch map prepared by William Tolmie, then manager of the post, shows the core of the farm, including the dwellings and stores in the area of the as yet unenclosed stockade, The structures depicted appear to have been devoted principally to cattle operations. To the west was a large structure, with two smaller ones, called a "calf shed," although its size indicates it was probably an enclosure, rather than a building. East of it was what appears to be a round pen, attached to a structure labeled "Slaughter House." East of the slaughter house were a series of long pens, each with a building at the north end, and terminating at the creek to allow stock enclosed in the pens access to water. The buildings were, from west to east, a calf shed, an ox stable, a hay and straw shed, and a horse stable. North of the pens were three barns, which may have been used to store grain; east of the barns were a series of large enclosures which were probably cultivated fields. Just east of the livestock pens and west of the first cultivated field were two dwellings. Along the creek, north of the horse pen, was a dairy, "built across the creek," in which butter, milk and cheese were probably stored. On the south side of the creek, near the livestock pens, were a piggery, with a small enclosure leading to the creek, and a "store used for sheepshearing, beef curing, &c. Further down stream, near the large calf pens, was an enclosure on the south bank, and an area indicated as dammed, where the stream broadened; the latter was identified as a sheepwashing dam.

The southernmost of what appear to be the cultivated fields was noted as "drained swamp and now under potatoes." To its south was an area identified as a meadow on which working cattle were pastured; its south border was the creek. Across the creek was another enclosed pasture for working cattle, East of the future stockade site was what appears to be a rather large garden area, which ran along the creek bank. The 1846-47 inventory noted Fort Nisqually had 220 acres under cultivation, apparently all fenced. The soil at the farm, as noted by Wilkes, was poor, and, as on the poorer soils at Fort Vancouver, cattle were penned on it to manure it. Crops at Nisqually during this period included wheat, oats, barley, peas, potatoes, turnips and colewart. Some areas near the dairy were sown with timothy and clover, as they were at Fort Vancouver, in the early 1840s. [844]

The organization of the farm at Fort Nisqually generally appears to have been tighter, and perhaps more efficient, than that at Fort Vancouver. To a certain extent, the tight operations would have been mandated by the much smaller labor force at Nisqually, and probably to its later development as a farm intended to supply the needs of other posts. In addition, cultivation of crops--with the brief Red River settlement interlude in 1841-43--was never of the highest priority at the post; its intended emphasis was on livestock, as its farm buildings show.

Cowlitz Farm

As previously discussed, the Cowlitz Portage was the termination point of river travel from the Columbia, and the embarkation stage for the overland route to Puget Sound. The farm was established on Cowlitz Prairie, one of many prairies alternating with forests, located between the landing and Fort Nisqually to the north. The prairie was about a mile from the landing. Its size varied, according to who did the estimating: William Tolmie thought it was about four miles long and one mile wide; Duflot de Mofrás thought it was six by two miles, James Douglas said the plain "...contains a surface of about 3000 acres of clear land." [845] The site, Douglas said in 1839, had the disadvantage of "...being separated from the River by a steep, rugged hill impracticable in its present state, to wheeled carriages: and the excavation of a convenient road, will be an enterprise attended with great labour and expense." [846] Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, who arrived overland from the north in 1841 noted the farm was located on "an extensive prairie on the banks of that river [the Cowlitz]." He later reported:

I was told that the stock on this farm do not thrive so well as elsewhere: there are no low prairie grounds on that side of the river in the vicinity, and it is too far for them to resort to the Kamass plains, a fine grazing country a few miles distant, where the wolves would make sad depredations with the increase, if not well watched...The hilly portion of the country, although the soil in many parts is very good, is so heavily timbered as to make it in the present state of the country valueless; this is also the case with many fine portions of level grounds; but there are large tracts of fine prairie suitable for cultivation and ready for the plough. [847]

Eugene Duflot de Mofrás, at Fort Vancouver the same year as Wilkes, described the Cowlitz River route:

Fort Cowlitz is situated on the river of the same name and rises on a plain 6 miles long and 2 miles wide. This river, on whose banks beds of coal and lignite are exposed, rises, as does the Nisqually, on the slopes of Mt. Rainier and empties into the right bank of the Columbia River, a few leagues above its mouth. Its channel, navigable only by barges, is extremely tortuous, being filled with fallen trees, rocks and rapids that make its passage hazardous. At narrow points its banks are steep and great masses of granite formation thickly covered with forests tend to give this country a wild and somber aspect Occasionally, where the country is fairly level, plains covered with rich pasturage are visible. The number of hectares placed under cultivation through the Company's efforts is approximately 100. [848]

By the spring of 1840, some houses had been built, and by the spring of 1841, when Charles Wilkes visited the site, a dairy was in operation, and both a gristmill and sawmill were under construction. [849] In 1845-46 a dwelling, granaries and outbuildings were erected at the mouth of the Cowlitz River to store the farm's produce until Company vessels could pick it up. [850] The inventory of structures in 1846-47 listed a fifty by thirty foot dwelling house; a forty by one hundred foot store and two forty by thirty foot stores, two granaries and the sawmill "& improvements attached, incomplete." In addition, there were a number of outbuildings listed, including thirteen 105 by twenty foot barns, a "close bam," eighty by twenty-five feet, two piggeries, two stables, and six "men's houses."

Two maps of "Cowelitz" Farm as cultivated in 1844-45, and 1845 and Spring 1846 shows the farm's organization to be compact, much more similar in nature to Nisqually's organization than to Fort Vancouver's, obviously due to the acreage available on its large plain. It was organized in a series of abutting rectangular and square fenced fields ranging in size from around nine to 105 acres. Some of the larger fields had the 105 by twenty foot barns, or grain sheds located within them. In the approximate center of the farm was a long rectangular enclosure in which were located two grain sheds and two barns in a line running southeast. Southeast of these were a cluster of buildings, which are not identified on the map, but must have been the dwelling house and possibly the store. Southeast of these, on the banks of a stream, were pigs styes--in 1846 the farm housed around three hundred hogs, excluding the young ones--and a stable, and three houses. Beyond the fenced enclosures, to the east on the plain, were several dwellings. The fields were numbered, and a comparison between the maps shows that crops were rotated within the different fields, although the fields ranging along the southeasterly edge of the farm appear to have been laid down permanently in timothy and clover. An employee later said the Company had "a comfortable, comodious dwelling house; a large two-story granary, with barns and sheds, conveniently distributed at various points over the farm." The lack of a road noted by Douglas in 1839, had been remedied by 1845: "They had a wagon road to the bank of the Cowlitz River, made at considerable cost," The sawmill was located near the Cowlitz River, and sheep--by 1846 about one thousand--were pastured on lands to the north of the farm; horses were pastured on the opposite bank of the Cowlitz. [851]