Fort Victoria (British Columbia)

Fort Victoria began as a fur trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company and was the headquarters of HBC operations in the Columbia District, a large fur trading area now part of the province of British Columbia, Canada and the U.S. state of Washington. Construction of Fort Victoria in 1843 highlighted the beginning of a permanent British settlement now known as Victoria, the capital city of British Columbia. The fort itself was demolished in November 1864 as the town continued to grow as a commercial centre serving the local area as well as trading with California, Washington Territory, the United Kingdom, and others.The original headquarters of HBC operations on the Pacific Coast of North America at the time of Victoria's founding was Fort Vancouver (now Vancouver, Washington) on the lower Columbia River, but its location was difficult to defend, ships often had difficulty entering the mouth of the Columbia, and it was far from the lucrative furs in New Caledonia farther north. With American settlers beginning to come into the region, in 1843 the company sent Chief Factor James Douglas to build a fort some distance north on Vancouver Island and made him its superintendent. The signing of the Oregon Treaty in 1846 settled the matter of Fort Vancouver’s further suitability as the United Kingdom gave up its claims in the area to the United States and in return kept Vancouver Island while the Americans dropped their claims north of the 49th parallel.