Last updated: February 18, 2021
Place
The Bastion
NPS Photo / Junelle Lawry
Quick Facts
Amenities
1 listed
Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits
In the northwest corner of Fort Vancouver's protective palisade wall, a three-story tower called a bastion or blockhouse rose above the surrounding plain. From the top, Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) employees could keep watch over the Columbia River valley and its gently rolling hills. The bastion was a common feature of HBC posts throughout North America. They typically had open slits or windows through which guns and cannons could be aimed at attacking enemies.
Fort Vancouver was a unique HBC post because it had no bastion for almost twenty years. It is possible that the fort had bastions in the early 1830s, but records from 1834 show that these were either torn down or had never existed. Unlike at some other HBC posts in the Pacific Northwest, local Indigenous peoples near Fort Vancouver were interested in trading with the HBC, and in finding economic benefits for their villages or tribes through these new arrivals. However, horrific epidemics in the 1830s, a consequence of the increased HBC presence in the area, had catastrophic effects on these local villages, greatly reducing their populations. Since the bastion was meant to be used for defense, the HBC managers at Fort Vancouver saw no reason to build one for many years.
The decision to build a bastion at Fort Vancouver came in 1845 for two reasons. First, while the Native population declined in the area, the American settler population was growing. Though relations between HBC employees and recent American arrivals were mostly pleasant and sometimes even supportive, tensions bubbled to the surface in the early 1840s as the United States and Great Britain discussed territorial boundaries in the Oregon Country. Chief Factor Dr. John McLoughlin and the HBC feared an attack by patriotic (or desperate) Americans. The second reason for constructing the tower was more a matter of prestige. When the British warship HMS Modeste dropped anchor at Fort Vancouver in the summer of 1844, its sailors fired a ceremonial seven-gun salute to the HBC. To McLoughlin's embarrassment, Fort Vancouver had no way to return the gesture. Almost immediately, he issued orders to erect a bastion on site. Carpenters and laborers completed the tower in February of 1845. By March, HBC cannons roared in salute from the top of the bastion when the HBC ship Vancouver arrived.
Though Fort Vancouver's bastion never saw any real military action it was still certainly an imposing structure. The tower, shaped like an octagon, was built into the northwest corner of the palisade. It stood three stories tall and was capped with a pointed roof. It was the tallest building at the fort. At the top level, eight three-pound iron guns pointed through small windows in each of the bastion's eight sides. When not in use, the windows were shuttered. The entrance on the ground level was probably on the bastion's southeast wall since that was the only side accessible from inside the fort. When the HBC left Fort Vancouver, the bastion fell into disrepair along with the rest of its buildings. Sometime after 1860, it burned to the ground. While it stood, however, the bastion was an important part of Fort Vancouver's image, and a key way that the HBC projected strength in a tangible, visible way.
Fort Vancouver was a unique HBC post because it had no bastion for almost twenty years. It is possible that the fort had bastions in the early 1830s, but records from 1834 show that these were either torn down or had never existed. Unlike at some other HBC posts in the Pacific Northwest, local Indigenous peoples near Fort Vancouver were interested in trading with the HBC, and in finding economic benefits for their villages or tribes through these new arrivals. However, horrific epidemics in the 1830s, a consequence of the increased HBC presence in the area, had catastrophic effects on these local villages, greatly reducing their populations. Since the bastion was meant to be used for defense, the HBC managers at Fort Vancouver saw no reason to build one for many years.
The decision to build a bastion at Fort Vancouver came in 1845 for two reasons. First, while the Native population declined in the area, the American settler population was growing. Though relations between HBC employees and recent American arrivals were mostly pleasant and sometimes even supportive, tensions bubbled to the surface in the early 1840s as the United States and Great Britain discussed territorial boundaries in the Oregon Country. Chief Factor Dr. John McLoughlin and the HBC feared an attack by patriotic (or desperate) Americans. The second reason for constructing the tower was more a matter of prestige. When the British warship HMS Modeste dropped anchor at Fort Vancouver in the summer of 1844, its sailors fired a ceremonial seven-gun salute to the HBC. To McLoughlin's embarrassment, Fort Vancouver had no way to return the gesture. Almost immediately, he issued orders to erect a bastion on site. Carpenters and laborers completed the tower in February of 1845. By March, HBC cannons roared in salute from the top of the bastion when the HBC ship Vancouver arrived.
Though Fort Vancouver's bastion never saw any real military action it was still certainly an imposing structure. The tower, shaped like an octagon, was built into the northwest corner of the palisade. It stood three stories tall and was capped with a pointed roof. It was the tallest building at the fort. At the top level, eight three-pound iron guns pointed through small windows in each of the bastion's eight sides. When not in use, the windows were shuttered. The entrance on the ground level was probably on the bastion's southeast wall since that was the only side accessible from inside the fort. When the HBC left Fort Vancouver, the bastion fell into disrepair along with the rest of its buildings. Sometime after 1860, it burned to the ground. While it stood, however, the bastion was an important part of Fort Vancouver's image, and a key way that the HBC projected strength in a tangible, visible way.