Vancouver National Historic Reserve Historic District, Historical district in Vancouver, Washington, US
The Vancouver National Historic Reserve Historic District covers the reconstructed Fort Vancouver, built on the original Hudson's Bay Company post locations, along with 1840s U.S. Army buildings at Vancouver Barracks and Mission 66-era National Park Service structures such as the 1966 visitor center. The district was designated to include these reconstructions and historic buildings within the national historic reserve.
The site began as a Hudson's Bay Company fur trading post in 1824, which controlled commerce and operations across the Pacific coast region. After the fur trade declined, the United States Army took over the location and developed it into a major military installation.
The visitor center, built in 1966 under the Mission 66 program, now serves both Fort Vancouver and Gifford Pinchot National Forest. It hosts rotating archaeological exhibits from the site and art by local Native artists, plus a theater showing films on Fort Vancouver and Mount St. Helens. The McLoughlin House unit in Oregon City displays original and period furnishings.
The Fort Vancouver unit lies in Vancouver, Washington, just north of Portland, Oregon; the McLoughlin House unit stands on a bluff above the Willamette River in Oregon City, Oregon. The visitor center, renovated in 2015, is co-run by the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service and shows two films, on Fort Vancouver and on Mount St. Helens. The fort structures are modern replicas built on the original locations.
All fort structures standing today are modern replicas, placed carefully on the original locations. The Park Service was long reluctant to rebuild them, preferring to manage the site as an archaeological site, until Congress directed reconstruction in 1965 at the urging of the local community.
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