Pacific Fur Company
The Pacific Fur Company, employee Alexander Ross wrote in 1849, was "an association which promised so much, and accomplished so little." Historians have since agreed with Ross, pointing out that the company never lived up to the ambitions set for it by its owner, John Jacob Astor.
A New York-based entrepreneur with ties to Montreal traders since 1787, Astor envisioned an enterprise that would control the trade, from trapping animals in North America to marketing furs in China. He planned a string of fur forts across the continent and incorporated the American Fur Company in 1808 to pursue his objective; but he failed to gain governmental support. Partners in the Montreal-based North West Company saw opportunity, however, and approached Astor to form a partnership in February 1810. Astor responded by creating the Pacific Fur Company in March and enlisting a group of experienced men as additional partners: three veteran North West Company men—Alexander McKay, Donald McKenzie, and Duncan McDougall—and four Americans—Wilson Price Hunt, Ramsay Crooks, Robert McClellan, and Joseph Miller.
Astor organized two expeditions to establish Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River, one by sea, a second by land. Wilson Price Hunt led the overland group west from St. Louis in October 1810, but his experience as a businessman did not prepare him to lead an expedition, and his foibles delayed their arrival in Astoria until February 1812. Capt. Jonathan Thorn sailed the Tonquin from New York in September 1810, with McKay, McDougall, and Robert Stuart aboard, arriving in Hawai'i in February 1811. Thorn and Pacific Fur Company partners hired twelve Hawai'ian natives as laborers before sailing away on March 1. They made the Columbia River on March 22. After a rough bar crossing, the Tonquin anchored in the Columbia's estuary. Under the partners' direction, the crew and the Hawai'ians built Fort Astoria over several months. While the events on the Columbia unfolded, Astor pursued another leg in his Pacific Fur Company plan by negotiating a trade relationship with Russia in May 1812, which gave the company rights to transport and sell Russian furs from Sitka to China.
Astor's timing could not have been worse. Just months after the completion of Fort Astoria and the establishment of fur outposts in the Pacific Northwest—Fort Okanogan (1811) at the confluence of the Okanogan and Columbia Rivers; Shewaps Post (1812) in present-day Kamloops, British Columbia; Clearwater Post (1812), east of present-day Lewiston, Idaho; and Wallace House (1812), just north of Salem, Oregon—the United States and Great Britain went to war.
News of the War of 1812 reached Fort Astoria in January 1813, when company partner Donald McKenzie arrived from interior posts where North West Company men had passed on copies of the declarations of war. "When we learned this news," merchant apprentice Gabriel Franchère recounted, "all of us at Astoria who were British subjects and Canadians wished ourselves in Canada . . . we were separated from our country by an immense space, and the difficulties of the journey at this season were insuperable: besides, Mr. Astor's interests had to be consulted first."
Faced with uncertain support from Astor, the partners at Fort Astoria decided to dissolve the enterprise in June 1814, after selling the Pacific Fur Company assets in goods and equipment to the North West Company in October 1813. Pacific Fur Company employees had the choice of working for the new owners. American employees and some Canadians left, while Scottish employees stayed on with the North West Company. By 1821, the new company and its operations in the Pacific Northwest had been absorbed into the Columbia Department of the Hudson's Bay Company.
Tonquin crossing Columbia Bar, 1811, ba006960
Engraving of Tonquin crossing Columbia River bar, March 25 1811.
Oreg. Hist. Soc. Research Libr., ba006960
William L. Lang
Alvan Waller (1808-1872)
Benjamin F. Shaw (1829-1908)
Columbia River (essay)
Creation of Washington Territory, 1853
E. Henry Wemme (1861-1914)
Elijah White (1806-1879)
Fort George (Fort Astoria)
Fort Yamhill Blockhouse
George Vancouver (1757-1798)
Great Reinforcement (1840)
Gustavus Hines (1809-1873)
Henry Larcom Abbot (1831-1927)
Hjalmar Hvam (1902-1996)
Jacob S. Conser (1818-1893)
James Cook (1728-1779)
Joel Palmer (1810-1881)
John Beeson (1803-1889)
John Jacob Astor (1763-1848)
John Minto (1822-1915)
John Mullan (1830-1909)
Lewis and Clark Expedition (essay)
Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809)
Oregon Question (essay)
Oregon Steam Navigation Company
Oregon Trail (essay)
Patrick Gass (1771-1870)
Percy A. Cupper (1882-1943)
Petitions to Congress, 1838-1845
Robert Gray (1755-1806)
Robert Sawyer (1880-1959)
Robert Stuart (1785-1848)
Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness
Toussaint Charbonneau (1767- c. 1839-1843)
Warrior Point
William Clark (1770-1838)
Ross, Alexander. Fur Hunters of the Far West, v. I. London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1855.
Jones, Robert F., ed., Astorian Adventure: The Journal of Alfred Seton, 1811-1815. New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 1993.
Franchere, Gabriel. A Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America. New York: Citadel Press, 1968.
Mackie, Richard Somerset. Trading Beyond the Mountains: The British fur Trade on the Pacific, 1793-1843 Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997.
Alexander Ross (1782-1856)
Born in the Scottish Highlands, schoolteacher Alexander Ross immigrated to Canada's St. Lawrence River Valley in 1804. Befriended by fellow Scot Alexander McKay, a veteran Montreal-based fur trader, both men found work in American John Jacob Astor's boldly conceived Pacific Fur Company enterprise in 1810.
The two voyaged around …
Astor Expedition (1810-1813)
The Astor Expedition was a grand, two-pronged mission, involving scores of men, that attempted to establish a worldwide trading network centered at present-day Astoria. Although the ambitious enterprise was ultimately doomed by the War of 1812, it left a lasting impact on Oregon history. Fort Astoria, the trading post …
Although Washington Irving (1783-1859) never traveled to Oregon Country, he wrote one of the most widely read and influential narratives of the region. His two-volume Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains, published in 1836, introduced more readers to the Pacific Northwest than any single …
Hudson's Bay Company
Although a late arrival to the Oregon Country fur trade, for nearly two decades in the early nineteenth century the British Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) dominated the region's social, economic, and political life while ensuring profit to its shareholders. This quest for profit—achieved through the pioneering extraction of the Pacific …
John Jacob Astor never visited Oregon or the Pacific Northwest, but his investment in the region's fur trade in the early nineteenth century left an important legacy. In 1810, Astor sent two expeditions representing his Pacific Fur Company, one by sea and one by land, to establish a fur post …
Tonquin (ship)
The Tonquin, built in 1807, was described by Edmund Fanning, its builder, as "a first-rate ship and fast sailing vessel." The ninety-four-foot, three-masted ship was copper bottomed and carried ten small cannon, mounted. On a day of strong wind in late March 1811, the crew of the Tonquin, out of New …
Wilson Price Hunt (1783-1842)
In 1809, John Jacob Astor selected Wilson Price Hunt to be his St. Louis agent for a new enterprise—the Pacific Fur Company—and to lead an overland expedition to establish a fur post at the mouth of the Columbia River.
Hunt was born at Asbury, New Jersey, in 1783. He pursued …
This entry was last updated on March 8, 2019