Astorian Will Barnett took exception to a comment in last week’s story about Capt. John Couch, in which Couch’s great-great-grandson, Graham Lewis, said the captain went up the Columbia River “almost to Oregon City, site of the main Hudson’s Bay Co. trading post.” 

Our correspondent had never heard of a Hudson’s Bay Post at Oregon City, and suggested Lewis meant Vancouver, Washington, instead. Good point. 

After a bit of research, this nugget was unearthed from the Oregon City website: “In 1823, Dr. John McLoughlin was appointed chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Vancouver. 

“In 1829, McLoughlin laid out a two-square-mile claim at Willamette Falls … A small fur trading center was also established, and work was begun on a millrace. These buildings became the first permanent white settlement in the Willamette Valley. 

“By 1839, the settlement had grown to a collection of small houses clustered around the millrace, populated primarily by employees of the Hudson’s Bay Co.” It was this Willamette Falls settlement that became Oregon City.

So there you have it. There actually was a Hudson’s Bay Co. of sorts at Oregon City, but it could hardly have been called a main site. According to the National Park Service, the “headquarters of the company’s interior fur trade” was, indeed, in Vancouver. (Image: Oregon City, John Mix Stanley)