Sauvie's Island is popular today as a recreation spot for residents of nearby Portland, and noted for its many produce and fruit farms, pumpkin patches and corn maizes.
Lewis and Clark called this location Wappatoe(or Wappatoo) Island when they visited here on their expedition, when it was inhabited by Native Americans. It was renamed around the 1820's after a farmer named Laurent Sauvé established a dairy on the island. In 1834, American mountain man Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth along with others who provided financial backing, established Fort William, a trading post, on the island. A smallpox/measle epidemic wiped out all the native inhabitants of the area, and flooding caused the Fort to be moved from the north end of the island to the center. Wyeth attempted several business ventures, including shipping lumber, fur trapping, and also building a fish processing plant with the intentions of shipping salmon from the island, but he and his employees were unable to compete against the Hudson Bay Company in nearby Vancouver, so Fort Williams was leased to Hudson Bay in 1836. Soon, pioneers traveled the Oregon Trail and began to settle in the area, including James and Julia Bybee, who immigrated from Kentucky in 1845 and built the Bybee-Howell house on Sauvies Island in 1856. (The house is now park of the Multnomah County Park system, managed by Metro). Fort Williams on Sauvie Island was the location of the first murder trial in what would later become the State of Oregon, when in 1836, the gunsmith for the Fort, Thomas J. Hubbard killed the Fort's tailor, during an arguement over a native american girl. Hubbard was acquitted, with the story circulating that the tailor was known for alcohol-induced rages, and the jury ruled the death was justifiable homicide.
The island is just outside of Portland city limits and is 32.75 square miles. Much of the island is dedicated to recreation and wildlife.
ADDITIONAL HISTORY REGARDING LEWIS and CLARK:
(From "Lewis and Clark Journals of the Expedition Vol 2", Monday, November 4, 1805: (sidenote: the explorers were near Quicksand River, which is the Sandy River near Troutdale, Oregon, in a swampy area)
"During the night, the tide rose eighteen inches near our camp" "Here he treated us with a root, round in shape, and about the size of a small Irish potato, which they call wappatoo, it is the common arrowhead or sagittifolia, so much cultivated by the Chinese, and when roasted in the embers till it becomes soft, and has an agreeable taste, and is a very good substitute for bread."
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