Fort Vancouver Cultural Landscape Report

Site

General Description

George Gibbs, a visitor at Fort Vancouver in the early 1850s, provides a general description of the country around Vancouver at that time:

The timber upon the lower lands of the Columbia is chiefly cotton-wood; on the smaller streams, vine-maple and alder; while the upland is covered with the usual growth of the coast region of Oregon--fir, spruce and towards the mountains, arbor vitae. This forest is almost entirely of secondary growth, and is deadened over a vast tract by the fires which run through the country...The succession of forest which so universally takes place in the Atlantic States does not occur here, the few deciduous trees of the country being such as growth only upon the water-courses. As a consequence, the first almost invariably spring up again when burnt off. The underbrush, consisting of hazel, spiraea, &c., is unusually dense... [927]

Between 1847 and 1860 the patterns of land ownership on the Fort Vancouver farm significantly altered. On an 1859 map prepared by Richard Covington, the various farms with their associated fields, established by the Company, are subdivided into smaller parcels, with structures placed in enclosures or cultivated fields. However, the areas of developed farm land tend to closely follow the pattern established by the Company. To a great extent, the uses of the land did not change--they were intensified, compelled by the same constraints of topography and natural features that determined Fort Vancouver's development. Thus, the Mill Plain still had cultivated fields, now more completely fenced, with several houses and barns on it, although the Company's barns had vanished; Lower Plain had a series of farms extending north in the same area where the Company's West Plain farm had been located, and a string of houses and fields aligned along the river edge, beginning in the area where the Company's dairy and piggery had operated; Fort Plain, south and east of the stockade, also had several farms which clustered around the areas of the plain the company formerly cultivated. Each of the three Back Plains shown on the map also featured individually owned farms. There were also several houses and structures along the river in the forest east of Fort Plain, an area the Company did not develop. The developments around the grist and sawmills still stood, although no longer tenanted by the Company.

The two most striking new features on the 1859 Covington map are the U.S. Army post, by that time called Fort Vancouver, and Vancouver City. These were located north, west, and southwest of the Company's stockade, which at that time was still extant and set within its diminished protective barrier of cultivated fields. However, even these two features, when viewed in terms of larger patterns, reflect functions similar to those established at Fort Vancouver. In the barracks area of the army post, company quarters, kitchens, officers' quarters, offices, a bakehouse, a warehouse, a hospital and prison, enclose a large open space with a flagstaff; the quartermaster's depot area southwest of the Hudson's Bay Company stockade--where the Company's river front structures and Kanaka Village were located--included stables, a wharf and storehouses, other utilitarian structures, such as wagon sheds, and a few scattered residences. Even Vancouver City--by 1860 a collection of houses, stores and shops--boasted a wharf, west of the army's wharf. A third feature was an enclosure around the 1846 Catholic Church, or "Mission," which had several associated structures.

The establishment and growth of these three institutions--the army, the church, and the town--had a profound impact on the appearance of the landscape in the immediate vicinity of the Company stockade during this period--particularly after the mid-1850s. The center of activity shifted--to the army garrison north of the stockade, to the quartermaster's depot south and west, and to Vancouver City to the west of the quartermaster's depot. After 1857-8, the organization of the landscape around the Company's stockade significantly altered, particularly in the Kanaka Village area and in the Fort Vancouver river front complex, where the Quartermaster's Depot had been established--Company structures, buildings, fences and gardens disappeared. By the spring of 1860, other than the post's heart--the stockade--very little of the Company's establishment was left.

With the disappearance of the Fort Vancouver farm, activities at its heart gradually slowed. With the rise of the new institutions, its physical dismemberment was assured.