Fort Hall

Infobox generic
color = khaki
name = Fort Hall
sub0 = Fur Trade Outpost
img1 = Wpdms fort hall.png width1 = 300px
lbl1 = Constructed:
row1 = 1834
lbl2 = Company built:
row2 = Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth
lbl3 = Location:
row3 = Fort Hall, Idaho
lbl4 = Continent:
row4 = North America
lbl5 = Later Ownership:
row5 = 1837, Hudson's Bay Company
lbl6 = Abandoned:
row6 = 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.Fact|date=November 2007 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 point at Pierre's Hole near the Snake 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 constructed the wooden Fort Hall on a nearby site 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. [cite web | work=Ronald E. Diener|title=The Jackson Hole Indian War of 1895 |url=http://rondiener.com/JHIW.pdf| accessdate=2006-11-29] Hall never traveled west. The fort was completed on July 31, 1834, the only U.S. outpost in the Oregon Country at that time. While Fort Hall was under construction Wyeth continued on towards the Columbia River with other members of his company and escorted Methodist missionary Jason Lee on his way to start the Methodist Mission in the Willamette Valley. Once Wyeth reached the lower Columbia he built Fort William to serve as the rendezvous point.cite web | last = | first = | authorlink = | coauthors = | title = Selected Letters of Nathaniel J. Wyeth | work = | publisher = Xmission.com | date = | url = http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/html/wyethltr.html | format = | doi = | accessdate = 2007-03-02 ]

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 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.cite book |last = Mackie |first= Richard Somerset |title= Trading Beyond the Mountains: The British Fur Trade on the Pacific 1793-1843 |year= 1997 |publisher= University of British Columbia (UBC) Press |location= Vancouver |isbn= 0-7748-0613-3 |pages= pp. 106-107 online at [http://books.google.com/books?id=VKXgJw6K088C Google Books] ] 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.

Infobox_nrhp | name =Fort Hall
nrhp_type =nhl


caption =
nearest_city= Fort Hall, Idaho
locmapin = Idaho
area =
built =1834
architect=
architecture=
designated= January 20, 1961cite web|url=http://tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/detail.cfm?ResourceId=197&ResourceType=Site
title=Fort Hall |accessdate=2008-02-07|work=National Historic Landmark summary listing|publisher=National Park Service]
added = October 15, 1966cite web|url=http://www.nr.nps.gov/|title=National Register Information System|date=2007-01-23|work=National Register of Historic Places|publisher=National Park Service]
governing_body = Private
refnum=66000306Infobox_nrhp | name =Fort Hall Site
nrhp_type =


caption =
nearest_city= Fort Hall, Idaho
locmapin = Idaho
area =
built =1870
architect= Unknown
architecture= No Style Listed
added = November 21, 1974cite web|url=http://www.nr.nps.gov/|title=National Register Information System|date=2007-01-23|work=National Register of Historic Places|publisher=National Park Service]
governing_body = Private
refnum=74000732

It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961.

References

External links

* [http://www.isu.edu/~trinmich/FtHall.html Idaho State University: Fort Hall]
* [http://www.idahohistory.net/OTfthall.html Idaho History: Fort Hall Site]
* [http://www.forthall.net/ Fort Hall Replica official site]
* [http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/html/fthall/fthall.html Fort Hall Accounts]