Listing Through Life

Fort Vancouver was a U.S. Army post from 1849 until 2011 when many of the barracks and other buildings became part of the National Park. In 1849, construction began on a row of houses on the ridge above the fort. These houses, used by Army officers, are still there, not part of the park proper, but included in a National Historic Reserve. Most of them are occupied by local businesses and organizations.

The Howard House was built in 1878 for General Oliver Otis Howard who was Commander of the Department of the Columbia (covering Oregon, Washington, Alaska and parts of Idaho).

The Grant House was built in 1849 and is the oldest remaining building on the post. It is named for Ulysses S. Grant, who was stationed here in 1852 as a Brevet Captain, but he never lived in the house. The house is now a restaurant, and I stopped in for lunch.

My cheeseburger and chips were excellent, although I didn’t tarry long because I always feel a bit odd eating by myself at a fancy sit-down restaurant.

A short way up the street is the Marshall House, built in 1886. It replaced the Howard House as the residence of the Commander. The first resident was General John Gibbon, who rose to fame during the Civil War as the brigadier who led the Iron Brigade. He was also first on the scene after the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

Its most famous resident was General George C. Marshall who lived here with his wife Katherine and their daughter from 1936 to 1938. He was commanding a brigade at the fort and supervising the CCC camps in the region.

The first floor of the house is open for tours on the rare days when it isn’t rented out for a business meeting or wedding. An older gentleman met me at the door and took me about for free.

All the fixtures in the house are original, but only two dining room chairs and some smaller pieces  of furniture belonged to the Marshalls.

Marshall’s study (below). The room behind my guide is a bathroom. It was installed in what was once a closet when Madeleine Albright was Secretary of State. She visited the area and announced that she wanted to stay in the house. The bedrooms upstairs have all been turned into offices rented by local businesses, so they had to turn Marshall’s study into a bedroom. And then the Secret Service informed whoever owns the house that Albright had to have her own bathroom. So they scrambled and had one installed in the closet. That’s a degree of power and conceit that is foreign to me.

The two chairs on either side of the desk belong to Marshall. (Not the rolling desk chair.)

This picture was given to Marshall by the Japanese after World War II in appreciation for the Marshall Plan which enabled them to rebuild their country. The gold is gold flakes and the red is ruby flakes. The picture has its own alarm system.

This was Marshall’s hat when he was a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute. He’s wearing it in the photo below (third from the left in the front row).

Me holding the helmet Marshall wore during World War I.

Nothing particularly amazing ever happened at Fort Vancouver, but the site has had a long and varied history.

I started my tour at the Pearson Air Museum, an old hangar for what used to be an Army air base — the oldest one still in use. The National Park Service has decided to use the hangar as a museum of early airplanes, but it’s rather sketchy. After having toured the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, recently, this one was pretty pathetic and I didn’t stay long.

The two rangers on the left side of the photo were building a scale model of a very early airplane that was flown from the field.

Near the hangar is a monument celebrating perhaps the most notable airplane-related event to occur at the field. In 1937, a Soviet Ant-25, carrying three crew members including pilot Valeri Chkalov, landed at the field after completing the first non-stop flight over the North Pole from Moscow.

I then headed to the reconstruction of the fort. The original fort was built in 1825 by the Hudson’s Bay Company to establish Britain’s claim to the Oregon territory also claimed by the United States. As American settlers entered the region, Dr. John McLoughlin, the chief factor, sold them supplies and even extended them credit. In 1846, the border between the United States and Canada was established at the 49th parallel. The Hudson’s Bay Company held out at the fort for a time, but moved away in 1860. Within a few years, the fort had disappeared due to fire and decay.  The site was excavated starting in 1947 and reconstruction began in 1966. About half the buildings that were inside the palisade have been rebuilt. A volunteer in the carpentry shop told me that the Hudson’s Bay company kept ridiculously-precise records of everything, so they know, not only where the buildings were and what they looked like, but how many barrels of supplies and containers of soap they had on had at any given time.

The Fort reminded me a lot of Fort William in Ontario, which was also a fur trading post.

The chief factor’s residence

The white building on the far right is the bake house, built into the wall because it provided bread for ships crews and others in addition to fort personnel.  Behind the chief factor’s house in the photos above and below can be seen the kitchen.

Inside the kitchen (Just to show how seriously the National Park Service takes its reconstructions)

The blacksmith shop and Indian trade shop/dispensary

The building on the right is one of the several fur warehouses that were in the fort.

The bastion, built mostly to fire salutes to ships arriving from other countries. Note the beaver weather vane (with a Starling on top)

The view from the bastion.

The carpentry shop on the left

The carpentry shop and jail

There were never any hostilities to speak of at the fort. Many of the workers and their families lived in small cabins west of the fort in a community called The Village. Two of the houses have been reconstructed.

During World War I, the area was occupied by a huge spruce mill which cut Sitka Spruce trees into boards that were shipped overseas to America’s allies to make airplanes. Nothing remains of this operation except photos, one of which I found on a wall near the river.

Within the boundaries of the National Park, there are also barracks and other buildings used by the Army during both world wars.

I also stumbled upon this monument, celebrating the first visit by Japanese to United States soil.

I followed a path across a bridge over a highway and down along the Columbia River. Along the way I saw this old apple tree, the oldest remaining tree from the area’s apple-growing past.

Looking across the Columbia River into Portland, Oregon.

Looking down on the fort and airfield from the bridge over the highway.

Two views of the Columbia River from the bridge.