Fort Vancouver Cultural Landscape Report

Operations at Fort Vancouver/Vancouver Barracks

In the spring of 1860, Colonel George Wright, who had preceded Major General William S. Harney in commanding Fort Vancouver headquarters in the late '50s, returned to Vancouver to command the Oregon Department. [1141] The following year Wright was called to California to head Union troops preparing to leave for the Civil War, and most regular army troops were removed from the region. In 1861, the Departments of Oregon and California were folded into the Department of the Pacific, with headquarters in San Francisco. In 1865 the Department of the Columbia was established, with headquarters at Vancouver Barracks, which included Oregon and Washington and Idaho territories, under the Division of the Pacific. The Department of the Columbia's headquarters were moved to Portland in 1867, and remained there until 1878. Alaska was placed under the jurisdiction of the Columbia Department in 1870. In 1878, the Department of the Columbia headquarters were returned to Vancouver Barracks, where it remained until the U.S. Army reorganized in 1913. In 1879, the post's name was changed from Fort Vancouver to Vancouver Barracks, which it has been known as ever since.

Although Fort Vancouver fostered the careers of many young officers who were to become famous in the Civil War, troops stationed at the post during that war's years had little contact with the bloody battles raging a continent away. [1142] Most of the regular army units left the post for the war. To replace troops shipped east, the post was at first manned by companies from the California Volunteers; later it was garrisoned by volunteers recruited from Washington Territory and Oregon. The troops were generally occupied escorting immigrants enroute to Oregon and Washington and skirmishing with Indians whose lands were being appropriated.

After the Civil War ended, regular army units were once again sent to the post. Early in 1866 the Department of the Columbia was staffed with one battalion of the Fourteenth Infantry, three companies of artillery and seven volunteer infantry companies. One of the artillery companies was stationed, ironically, at American Camp in the San Juan Islands, where Great Britain and the United States had each posted troops pending the final settlement of the water boundary between Canada and the United States--a political remnant of the dispute which had led to the founding of the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Vancouver over forty years earlier.

In the late 1860s, the continuation of the post was in some doubt; the Department's headquarters were moved to Portland in 1867, and some army inspectors questioned its viability. In 1866, Brigadier General James F. Rusling, inspector for the Quartermaster's Department gave Fort Vancouver a scathing report: "Militarily considered it has ceased to be of value because of heavy settlement in that region and disappearance of Indians. As a depot of supplies facts and figures prove it useless. As a school for "practice" if such be deemed advisable on the north west Pacific coast it may be well to retain it, but San Francisco or Portland is preferable. Recommend early abandonment of Fort Vancouver as practically valueless to the Govt." [1143] However, the post was useful to the army as a staging area for military actions against periodic Indian uprisings in the region, and it remained in operation.

Between the mid '60s and the early 1880s, troops stationed at the post were largely engaged in rounding up the few remaining bands of Indians not living on reservations, or putting those who had escaped and were rebelling back onto the lands assigned to them. The first significant engagements in which Fort Vancouver troops participated during this period was the Modoc War on the south Oregon border, during which Major General Edward Richard Sprig Canby was murdered while on a peace mission to the Modocs, who refused to enter a reservation. [1144]

In 1863 the government attempted to persuade the Nez Perces to relinquish Wallowa, the lands granted them by treaty in 1855 when gold was discovered in the region; a smaller reservation in the Lapwai Valley was offered to their leader, Chief Joseph. The matter had simmered for some years, but the valley was finally ceded to the Indians in 1873. A change in policy reversed that decision in 1875, and, following a meeting in which a holy man of the tribe was arrested for stating he would not go to Lapwai, Nez Perces attacked settlers in the Salmon River country. Fort Lapwai sent two calvary companies to engage the Nez Perces, one of which was almost annihilated in a battle in June. The Department of the Columbia mobilized six hundred soldiers, including troops from Fort Vancouver, to capture Chief Joseph's band. In September, the Nez Perces were captured while attempting to retreat to Canada for the winter. In 1878 soldiers from Fort Vancouver were dispatched again to fight the Bannack Indians in Idaho and eastern Oregon. Some Indians captured in those battles were brought to Fort Vancouver and placed in the guardhouse. [1145]

In 1878, an army appropriations bill was passed by Congress, requiring all division and departmental headquarters to be located at forts or barracks. The headquarters for the Department of the Columbia were shifted from Portland, back to Fort Vancouver, leading to the first major period of expansion of the post's physical facilities since the early 1860s. A wave of new construction on the site followed in the first half of the 1880s, most evident today in the structures of what is now called Officers' Row. The following year the post was renamed Vancouver Barracks. [1146]

In 1881, General Nelson Miles arrived at Vancouver Barracks as the new commander of the Department of the Columbia. His aide-de-camp was First Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, already known for his leadership in an exploring party that found the remains of Sir John Franklin's ill-fated Northwest Passage exploring party of 1847. Under orders from General Miles, Schwatka took part in an 1882-83 expedition to Alaska, crossing the Chilkoot Pass in 1883, and arriving at the source of the Yukon, which he navigated to its mouth. Other expeditions organized at the post included Lieutenant Symons' 1881 survey of the Upper Columbia drainage, and Lieutenant Henry T. Allen's 1885-86 reconnaissance expedition into the Copper River and Tanana Valley region, living off the country with his party. These early surveys provided information that later led to the Alaskan gold rushes, including the famous Kkondike gold rush of 1897. [1147]

The completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1883, which linked Portland, via the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company to central Washington, and thence to the east coast over both Northern Pacific and Great Northern routes, signalled the end of the Pacific Northwest's frontier era. Smaller army posts in the region were closed; reserve units at Vancouver Barracks could be rapidly transported at least partially via rail to any potentially troublesome spots.

Until the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, troops stationed at Vancouver Barracks were largely engaged in drills, and military instruction at the post. Some units participated in the survey expeditions previously mentioned, and in enforcing martial law in domestic uprisings. In 1885 and '86, troops were belatedly sent to both Tacoma and Seattle to assist civil authorities in controlling anti-Chinese riots. [1148]

In 1892 Vancouver Barracks sent five companies as part of a massive twenty company force of infantry called up by President Benjamin Harrison to control violence erupting as a result of a union strike against the Mine Owner's Protective Association (MOA) in Coeur d'Alene Idaho. The following year, Vancouver Barracks soldiers were ordered up to control a large group of unemployed Puget Sound workers who joined Coxey's march on Washington, and in 1894 troops were sent out to assist the Northern Pacific Railroad during the Pullman strike, part of a federal call up by President Grover Cleveland when the American Railway Union strike spread to twenty-seven states and territories. [1149] Other policing actions by Vancouver Barracks-based soldiers included escorting relief pack trains to Alaska during the turbulent gold rush years of the late '90s. [1150]

After the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the Fourteenth Infantry, which had been stationed at Vancouver Barracks for fourteen years, and all other units of the regular army at the post were transferred, and the establishment was garrisoned by volunteer troops. During the conflict with Spain, the post was an important mobilization and training center for Oregon and Washington volunteers. After the war, troops were sent from Vancouver Barracks as part of the occupying force in the Philippines used to suppress the nationalist movement. Several well-known regiments--the Second Oregon and the Thirty-fifth Infantry Volunteers were recruited, organized and trained there. [1151]

Following the war, the military was reorganized, and the size of the United States' standing army was increased. Vancouver Barracks was selected to house an infantry regiment and two batteries of artillery. Funds were authorized for a major construction program to upgrade the facilities, which began in 1902-3, and continued through 1910. A number of the post's extant buildings date from this period. [1152]

In 1906, artillery troops from Vancouver Barracks were sent to Cuba to intervene in the nationalist movement rising there. In the mid-teens Vancouver soldiers were sent to Mexico to support U.S. intervention in that country's affairs, after Francisco Villas's 1916 raid across the U.S. border in New Mexico during the on-going Mexican revolution. [1153]

Until the outbreak of the Spanish-American war, social and recreational activities at Vancouver Barracks were largely limited to officers and their wives. The average soldier's life consisted of assigned duties, field marches, occasional parades, poor rations--supplemented in some years by company gardens, and off-duty drinking in Vancouver saloons. In 1897, a new building dedicated as a post exchange and an athletic field built north of the officers' residences erected in the 1880s, expanded recreational opportunities for the typical soldier at the post. During and after the war, when occupation troops cycled in and out of Vancouver Barracks, the frequency of parades, balls and band concerts increased to celebrate departures or returns of different regiments, and field day events, which featured such events as baseball, track, boxing became part of the annual cycle of events at the post. Officers took part in these activities, as well as receptions and balls for visiting dignitaries; polo matches were held on a field south of old Upper Mill Road, just east of the now-vanished Hudson's Bay Company fort. [1154]

In 1913, the military abolished the Department of the Columbia in a reorganization which eliminated military departments throughout the country. Vancouver Barracks became the headquarters of the Seventh Brigade, reporting to Third Division headquarters in San Francisco. One regiment was stationed at Vancouver Barracks. By 1916, as a result of troops sent to the Mexican border, about 150 soldiers were left at Fort Vancouver, later supplemented by recruiting drives as the war in Europe continued. During the World War I, the barracks became a recruiting station from which the 318th and Fourth Engineers and the 44th Infantry were formed and sent to France, but its principal role was to serve as an airplane materials manufacturing center under the direction of the Spruce Division of the Army Signal Corps. [1155]

Spruce Production Division

In November of 1917 the United States announced the formation of the Spruce Production Division, part of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, at Vancouver Barracks, with headquarters in Portland, Oregon. It was a home front activity designed to supply high quality spruce wood for the production of allied combat airplanes, utilizing the Pacific Northwest's large and accessible stands of old growth Sitka spruce. [1156] The division was placed under the command of an army captain, Brice Disque, who forged an alliance between the federal government and northwest mill owners to bring soldiers into the forests to log. [1157]

At that time, Vancouver Barracks was to serve as a training center for soldiers enroute to the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and to that end, infantry regiments stationed at the post were removed to make room for the thousands of "spruce" soldiers Disque planned to employ. However, early in 1918, the Barracks also became the site of the Cut-up Plant, the principal spruce mill of the Division, built and operated by spruce soldiers. Disque later said "There was not a commercial mill on the coast that was equipped to saw straight-grained spruce in the quantity demanded, and remain in business." [1158] Ultimately, there were six districts and sub-districts of the Division, located in Oregon and Washington, and many dozens of soldier camps, most of which were near lumber company camps, logging or building the miles of railroads necessary to reach remote stands of the premium Sitka spruce.

The mill and its associated structures at Vancouver Barracks eventually covered fifty acres south of old Upper Mill Road, including the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Vancouver site. Operations began on February 7, 1918; it had taken forty-five working days from ground-breaking to opening ceremonies. [1159] According to Disque, the entire plant cost $825,000. [1160] The Vancouver Barracks mill was the first of four mills that were to have been built in Oregon and Washington: two, one at Toledo, Oregon, and one at Port Angeles, Washington, were under construction in the summer of 1918, but were only around seventy percent complete when the armistice was signed. A fourth, to be erected in Washington's Clallam County from a dismantled mill in British Columbia, was in the process of being shipped when the war ended. The materials for the mills were later sent to Vancouver for storage and later auction.

The impact of the mill and the thousands of spruce soldiers that descended upon Vancouver Barracks was significant: a cantonment was built north of Officers' Row to house soldiers, and, as the mill geared up into production, tents and support buildings were erected around the mill on the historic lower plain to house and care for the spruce soldiers.

Special "Provisional Regiments" were formed--to operate the mill at Vancouver; to provide guard duty, and to provide motor transport. Major J.D. Reardan was placed in charge of the Second Provisional Regiment, responsible for building and operating the plant and kilns, including installing a sewage plant, and lighting system: by July of 1918, there were 2,400 troops housed at the mill site. The First Provisional Regiment was initially housed in the Upper Cantonment, and later transferred to the Barracks, where it provided guard and military police duties. The Third Provisional Regiment was primarily comprised of automobile mechanics and drivers, about half of which was stationed in the forests to keep trucks, cars, and ambulances running. A fourth regiment was stationed, briefly, at Yaquina Bay near Toledo, Oregon. The mill ran continuously, night and day; the soldiers worked six hour shifts.

When the armistice was signed in November of 1918, the Cut-up Plant had been in production for less than a year. Operations in the woods ceased on November 12, and all contracts with private mills were cancelled. Any timber already felled, or cants already manufactured was shipped to Vancouver. Some--but not all--Spruce Division Railroads throughout the two states were torn up and the equipment warehoused. Demobilization of the spruce soldiers began on December 3. When the war ended, the Cut-up mill at Vancouver Barracks had over four million feet of select airplane stock ready for shipment, and a portion of between twenty-five and thirty million feet of the commercially-suitable by-product ready for delivery. Eight hundred soldiers were kept at Vancouver Barracks to inventory and store the materials and equipment at the plant and those being shipped to the plant from the forests. The Division formed a Sales Board to market all major equipment and materials through sealed bid. It was, Disque claimed, "...the largest sale of Government property ever advertised, only the sale of equipment from the Panama Canal excelling it in number of items and valuation." [1161] The bids were low, and only about $200,000--valued at $12 million--of government property was sold. Some logs, the commissary stores which supported the spruce soldiers, and the commercial lumber that was the mill's by-product were disposed of, primarily through negotiation with private firms.