Newest Era

The fort served as the core of the HBC's western operations, controlling the fur business from Russian Alaska to Mexican California, and from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Vancouver was the principal colonial settlement in the Pacific Northwest, and a major centre of industry, trade, and law.
The Village to the west of the fort was Vancouver's first neighbourhood. The employees of the Hudson's Bay Company lived there with their families in simple one or two room cabins. The Village was incredibly diverse, a community of people whose homelands spanned half the globe.

By the 1920s, America’s longest-lived trade post, Fort Union, was little more than barely visible bumps and depressions. Its legacy lived on in former traders’ memories and journals. The nearby town of Mondak thrived. To capitalize on and promote tourism, North Dakota residents desired to reconstruct the fort. Unfortunately, the Great Depression and the Second World War put a halt to reconstruction plans.

The fort, also known as The Lead Mine Fort, is a reconstruction of the original fort that stood here in the 18th Century. The original fort was built in 1778, during the American Revolution to help supply the Continental forces with lead for ammunition. The original fort was built of horizontal logs with a bastion at each corner. It was a cabin fort, with 48 cabins in the initial structure, which helped reinforce the walls. General Daniel Roberdeau organized and paid for the construction.

The area at the Snake River was known for centuries as a favourable fur region. The earliest white men in the region arrived in the years 1810-1812. In 1834, Mr Wyeth from New England founded Fort Hall. Not many years later however, the Hudson Bay Company constructed a rival fort near the junction of Boise River with the Snake. They named the post Fort Boise, its purpose was simply to drive Fort Hall out of business. In 1837 Wyeth sold out to the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1843, the "Great Migration" to the Willamette Valley of Oregon began.

William and Charles Bent, along with Ceran St. Vrain, built the original fort on this site in 1833 to trade with plains Indians and trappers. The adobe fort quickly became the centre of the Bent, St.Vrain Company's expanding trade empire that included Fort St.Vrain to the north and Fort Adobe to the south, along with company stores in Mexico at Taos and Santa Fe. The primary trade was with the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians for buffalo robes.