The main route from the interior fur trading centres of Fort Kamloops and Fort Saint John was along the Okanagan Valley and the Columbia River to Fort Vancouver. From here the Hudson Bay Company began to explore fur trading resources north along the Pacific Coast.
In 1824 Chief Trader James McMillan and a small crew of men canoed north up the river network from today's Kalama to Olympia in Washington State. Then paddled Puget Sound to the Nicomekl River in British Columbia. From this point they went upriver and portaged crossing over to the Salmon River. Once reaching the Fraser River, just a few kilometers north of this portage, the went down stream to establish the first Fort Langley. This camp at the portage has been commemorated by this plaque.
But little did McMillan and crew knew the importance that Fort Langley would become. Until the mid-1840s all furs collected in the Pacific reaches of the Hudson's Bay Company's operations were sent to Fort Vancouver for processing and to be ultimately sent to England to be made into hats.
However, as the War of 1812 ended the British and American governments declared the 49th parallel from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains to be the border between them. The Hudson's Bay Company had supreme mercantile rights to the entire watershed of Hudson Bay saw the loss of the upper Red River Valley in today's Minnesota and North and South Dakota.
West of the Rockies the British and Americans entered into a cordially agreement for mutually uses of the Pacific watershed. But through the 1830s and 1840s this began to change with the American belief in Manifest Destiny. Then prominent Americans began to argue that 54° 40’ north should become the northern border of the United States. The southernmost point in Russian held Alaska
Then the Oregon Trail began to bring settlers to the region. Quickly the Hudson's Bay Company relinquished control south of the Columbia River, but kept all operations in today's Washington State. This was primarily to preserve the easy Okanagan Trail to Fort Kamloops. But the Oregon Treaty of 1846 changed this situation by declaring the 49th parallel the boundary between the Americans and the British. Quickly Fort Langley rose to prominence as the main fur trading fort on the British Columbia mainland.
THE PORTAGE
While leading the exploring expedition from Fort Vancouver, which discovered the mouth of the Fraser River, Chief Factor James McMillan camped at this spot on the portage between the Nicomekl and Salmon rivers.
December 15th - 16th 1824