Fort Nez Percés

Constructed on the east bank of the Columbia River, Fort Nez Percés was half a mile north of the mouth of the Walla Walla River and a few miles below the mouth of the Snake River. The location was chosen for its strategic geographic value. The nearby Walla Walla Valley had long been an important rendezvous point for parties working several peripheral fur districts. The 1815 decision by the NWC to refocus the entire New Caledonia region southward to the Columbia River meant greatly increased traffic on the river. Donald MacKenzie intended to open up the Snake River country, adding another operation converging on the area where Fort Nez Percés was built.

Essentially all company exports and supplies passed through the Columbia Gorge. The location of Fort Nez Percés at the eastern end of this trunk line to the ocean made it the most important post in the interior. In addition, increasing tensions from occupying the homelands of the local Native Americans necessitated a permanent fortified post. Finally, the area was significant to the Indians. Not only was it a major meeting and trading ground, but it was where Lewis and Clark had first met the indigenous peoples of the Columbia River and had made an informal treaty of friendship.[4]

The fort was built with a double palisade, unique among North West Company forts. The inner wall was 12 feet (3.7 m) high, and a five-foot wide "strong gallery" was located between the two walls.[5] The storehouse and dwellings were within. Trade was conducted via a small hole in the inner wall. The outer palisade was made of planks 20 feet (6.1 m) high and 6 inches (150 mm) thick, and topped with a range of balustrades four feet high.[5] Towers were located at each of the fort's four corners; these contained large water tanks for fighting enemy fire.[5] Soon after the post was built, Alexander Ross said it was "the strongest and most complete fort west of the Rocky Mountains, and might be called the Gibraltar of the Columbia."[4]

While traveling west with fellow members of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, William H. Gray described the original fort's appearance thus:

"Old Fort Wallawalla, in 1836, when the mission party arrived, was a tolerably substantial stockade, built of drift-wood taken from the Columbia River, of an oblong form, with two log bastions raised, one on the southwest corner, commanding the river-front and southern space beyond the stockade; the other bastion was on the northeast corner, commanding the north end, and east side of the fort. In each of these bastions were kept two small cannon, with a good supply of small-arms. These bastions were always well guarded when any danger was suspected from the Indians. The sage brush, willow and grease-wood had been cut and cleared away for a considerable distance around, to prevent any Indian getting near the fort without being discovered. Inside the stockade were the houses, store, and quarters for the men, with a space sufficiently large to corral about one hundred horses."[6]

In September 1818 Donald MacKenzie left his new base at Fort Nez Percés to lead a large fur trapping party into the Snake River country.[2] The operation was a major departure from the usual practice of the North West Company. MacKenzie spent the winter of 1818-19 shifting camps and trapping in a large region. His return to Fort Nez Percés in July 1819 with an unusually large and valuable catch won him praise and vindicated the establishment of Fort Nez Percés, about which some company partners had been skeptical. The Snake country expeditions from Fort Nez Percés became an annual affair and regularly produced a large portion of company's entire fur export west of the Rocky Mountains.[4]

Shortly after a visit by the American Charles Wilkes' expedition (which lost one of two ships on Columbia River bar); the fort was destroyed by fire on October 5, 1841. The HBC's Sinclair settlement expedition from the Red River Colony passed through one day before the fire. They helped save what they could, but they decided not to stay. Rather they traveled through the night because the large number of Indians in the area made it unsafe to camp.

Fort Nez Percés was subsequently rebuilt with adobe bricks.[7] The buildings inside the fort were constructed of a wooden frame with adobe brick walls.[8] Manufacture of the bricks used local "wild rye",[9] and some bricks likely originated from Marcus Whitman's mission.[8]