Fort Boise
Outpost of the British Empire
Chinese and European aristocrats of the early 19th Century had one thing in common,
and it was the best that money could buy —a genuine beaver hat! Half a world away, in
the Oregon Country, the British Hudson's Bay Company was doing all it could to remain the
primary supplier of furs to make those hats. When American fur traders built Fort Hall as a
trading post in what is today Southeastern Idaho, the Hudson's Bay Company built Fort
Boise across the Snake River from this site to oppose them in 1838. By the mid 1840's
trappers had depleted the beaver population; Fort Boise and Britain's claim to the Oregon Country was in rapid decline.
