Fort Hall
| Fort Hall Fur Trade Outpost |
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|---|---|
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| Constructed: | 1834 |
| Company built: | Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth |
| Location: | Fort Hall, Idaho |
| Continent: | North America |
| Later Ownership: | 1837, Hudson’s Bay Company |
| Abandoned: | By 1863 |
Fort Hall was a 19th century outpost in the eastern Oregon Country, part of the present-day United States, and is located in Fort Hall, Idaho. It was considered the “most significant of all pioneer institutions in the West” by noted historian Merrill D. Beal. Fort Hall was constructed as a commercial venture, situated on the Snake River north of present-day Pocatello, Idaho. It became an important stop in the 1840s and 1850s for an estimated 270,000 emigrants along the Oregon Trail and California Trail, which diverged west of the fort.
History
The idea for the fort arose in 1832, as a business venture conceived by fur trapper Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth and 70 other men. They planned to journey to a rendezvous at Hams Fork, (near present day Granger, WY) where they would sell goods to mountain men and fur trappers. They planned to use the profits from the rendezvous to establish a fishery on the Columbia River, exporting salmon to New England and Hawaii. The Columbia River post was the short-lived Fort William.
The business venture proved to be troublesome. After arriving at the rendezvous, Wyeth and his men found that their goods sold poorly. As a back-up plan, they traveled West to the Snake near the mouth of the Portneuf and constructed the wooden Fort Hall (near present day Pocatello, ID) to sell off their excess goods. Wyeth named the fort after a major investor in the enterprise, Henry Hall, a partner of the Boston firm Tucker & Williams & Henry Hall. Hall never traveled west. The fort was completed on July 31, 1834, the only U.S. outpost in the Oregon Country at that time. When Fort Hall was completed, Wyeth continued on towards the Columbia River with other members of his company and met Methodist missionary Jason Lee on his way to start the Methodist Mission in the Willamette Valley at Fort Walla Walla on the Columbia. Once Wyeth reached the lower Columbia he built Fort William to serve as the rendezvous point.
In August 1837 Wyeth sold the fort to the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), which controlled the fur trade in the Oregon Country from their headquarters at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia. The HBC considered Americans in the Snake River country an encroachment upon their territory and to counter Fort Hall built the rival post of Snake Fort, later named Fort Boise. The HBC had been working the Snake country for years, and with the support of Fort Boise were able to drive Wyeth’s company out of the region and sell Fort Hall to the HBC. The company raised the British flag over the fort and used the outpost to actively discourage U.S. emigrants from continuing westward. Emigrants who arrived at the fort were shown the abandoned wagons of those who had come before them and who had continued westward with their animals on foot. In 1843, Dr. Marcus Whitman, a missionary who had established a mission near present-day Walla Walla, Washington, led a wagon train westward from the fort. In the following years the number of wagon trains grew sharply and the fort became a welcome stop along the trail for thousands of emigrants. It also remained an important trading post for mountain men and the Native Americans of the region, in particular the Shoshone. The fort found itself located in the United States in 1846 following the Oregon Treaty.
By 1863 the wooden fort had decayed completely. A replica was constructed in the 1960s in Pocatello and is now operated as a public museum. The original site is located at Fort Hall in the Fort Hall Indian Reservation.
| Fort Hall | |
|---|---|
| U.S. National Historic Landmark | |
| Nearest city: | Fort Hall, Idaho |
| Built/Founded: | 1834 |
| Designated as NHL: | January 20, 1961 |
| Added to NRHP: | October 15, 1966 |
| NRHP Reference#: | 66000306 |
| Governing body: | Private |
| Fort Hall Site | |
|---|---|
| U.S. National Register of Historic Places | |
| Nearest city: | Fort Hall, Idaho |
| Built/Founded: | 1870 |
| Architect: | Unknown |
| Architectural style(s): | No Style Listed |
| Added to NRHP: | November 21, 1974 |
| NRHP Reference#: | 74000732 |
| Governing body: | Private |
It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961.
References
- ^ “The Jackson Hole Indian War of 1895″. Ronald E. Diener. Retrieved on 2006-11-29.
- ^ “Selected Letters of Nathaniel J. Wyeth”. Xmission.com. Retrieved on 2007-03-02.
- ^ Mackie, Richard Somerset (1997). Trading Beyond the Mountains: The British Fur Trade on the Pacific 1793-1843. Vancouver: University of British Columbia (UBC) Press. pp. 106–107. ISBN 0-7748-0613-3. online at Google Books
- ^ a b “Fort Hall”. National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Retrieved on 2008-02-07.
- ^ a b “National Register Information System”. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service (2007-01-23).