01Summary
A log fur trading post that John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company began in 1811 near the mouth of the Columbia River. It was far from the wagon road, but men sent east from Astoria in 1812 crossed South Pass, the gap the Oregon Trail later used.
02History
In 1810 the New York fur merchant John Jacob Astor formed the Pacific Fur Company. He planned a string of trading posts across the continent, with a main post at the mouth of the Columbia River, where furs could be shipped to China. One party sailed from New York on the ship Tonquin.
It reached the Columbia in March 1811, after eight men drowned trying to find a way across the rough river bar. On April 12, 1811, the company's men and 12 Hawaiian workers began building a log fort on the south bank. It became the first permanent American settlement on the Pacific coast.
A second party, led by Wilson Price Hunt, came overland from St. Louis. They lost a man and several boatloads of goods on the Snake River and nearly starved, and Hunt did not reach Astoria until February 1812. In June 1812 Robert Stuart set out east with a small party to carry news to Astor in New York.
On the way a Shoshone man told them of a shorter route to the south. On October 22, 1812, Stuart and six companions crossed the Rockies through a low, wide gap later called South Pass, and on April 30, 1813, they reached St. Louis. Emigrant wagons began using the same pass about 30 years later.
The War of 1812 ended Astor's plan. Fearing that a British warship would seize the post, the partners sold it and their goods to the North West Company, a British fur company based in Montreal, in October 1813.
The warship HMS Racoon arrived anyway, and in December 1813 Captain William Black raised the British flag and renamed the post Fort George, after King George III. It stayed the main western depot of the British fur trade until 1825, when the Hudson's Bay Company moved its headquarters up the river to Fort Vancouver.
The treaty that ended the war said that places taken during it must be given back. In October 1818 an American agent, John B. Prevost, met the fort's manager, James Keith, and declared the post restored to the United States. It was mostly a formality.
The North West Company kept owning and running the fort, and that same year Britain and the United States agreed to share the Oregon Country. Still, for decades American leaders pointed to Astoria as part of their claim to Oregon, until the two nations divided it in 1846.
03Today
A small city park at 15th and Exchange streets in downtown Astoria keeps part of the fort site, with a replica blockhouse built in 1956 and a painted backdrop of the old fort. The site is a National Historic Landmark. On Coxcomb Hill above town stands the Astoria Column, 125 feet tall and dedicated in 1926, with 164 steps to a lookout and a spiral band of pictures, scratched into plaster, that tells the area's history.
04People connected here
05Stops nearby
The Oregon Trail ran about 2,170 miles from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City. The stops just before and after this one are below. You can also follow the whole route on the interactive map.