Ft.
Hall was an important stop for the emigrants in the
trail's early years. Yet few who passed through this fort
knew the strange reason it was built.
Nathaniel
Wyeth began with a grand moneymaking scheme. He and 70 men
planned to haul supplies to the 1832 fur trappers rendezvous (See
Mountain Men) , reap huge profits, then push west to
the Columbia River, where they hoped to set up a fishery
and export salmon to Hawaii and New England.
From
the beginning almost nothing went right. After months of
travel, Wyeth arrived at the rendezvous, but no one would
buy his goods. Frustrated and disillusioned, his last ditch
plan was to build a fort nearby. Its purpose: to serve as
a base of operations to get rid of Wyeth's excess supplies
by selling them to nearby tribes and trappers.
When
Ft. Hall was completed in 1834, it stood as the only American
outpost in the entire Oregon country.
Emigrant
Osborne Russell:
"On the fourth of August, the fort was completed.
And on the fifth, the stars and stripes were unfurled to
the breeze at sunrise, in the center of a savage and uncivilized
country over an American trading post."
But
the fort did not stay American very long. Wyeth's other
ventures failed, and by 1837, he had sold the fort to the
huge Hudson's Bay Company. The British flag now flew over
Ft. Hall. And the British made a point of discouraging the
American pioneers from traveling on to Oregon. It was a
subterfuge that worked for a few years at least.
Emigrant
James Nesmith:
"Capt. Grant, then in charge of the Hudson Bay Company
at Ft. Hall, endeavored to dissuade us from proceeding further
with our wagons, and showed us the wagons that the emigrants
of the preceeding year had abandoned, as evidence of the
impracticability of our determination."
Ft.
Hall Replica
Official web site of the Ft. Hall replica (in Pocatello)
