The Hudson’s Bay Company decided to move upriver from their first trading post at the mouth of the Columbia. A hundred miles upriver, Company representative John McLaughlin found a sloping riverbank leading to a prairie with forest behind. The forest would provide timber, while the prairie could easily be farmed and used for pasture. Plus, the site was already a trading center for native people. Soon Fort Vancouver was the headquarters for a huge region of the western U.S. and Canada.

One Company employee found the site so attractive that it seemed as if it had been landscaped:

The Establishment is beautifully situated on the top of a bank . . . an extensive view of the River the surrounding Country and the fine plain below which is watered by two very pretty small Lakes and studded as if artificially by clumps of Fine Timber.   –George Simpson, 1825