Fort Vancouver celebrates 200th anniversary during conflicted moment for national landmarks

Fort Vancouver has existed for 200 years in some form. The log cabin-style fur trading depot was rebuilt on archaeological foundations in the 1960s.

But the Hudson’s Bay Company first located its fort on the site in 1825, building upon a place Native Americans had gathered to trade for thousands of years before that.

“This is a time in history where multiple cultures were all thrown together in one area,” said Aaron Ochoa, a supervisory park ranger at the fort.

On Saturday, the fort will host its bicentennial marking that 200th anniversary. There will be speeches from Washington Lt. Gov. Denny Heck and former director of the National Park Service Chuck Sams, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Visitors can experience the fort’s blacksmith shop, kitchen bakehouse and watch historic weapons being fired.

Missionaries came to the site in the 1830s, followed by wagon trains in the 1840s and naturalists like Douglas fir-namesake David Douglas. The fur trade mixed together cultures from Ireland, Scotland, England, Hawaii and French Canada, as well as Indigenous people from across North America, according to Ochoa.

“Fort Vancouver is certainly a place where you can learn about what happens when major changes come together in one place,” he said.

But, the bicentennial also comes at a fraught time for parks, museums and cultural institutions across the U.S. that are overseen by the federal government. Entities like the National Park Service, the Smithsonian museums and National Endowment for the Humanities have been stripped of employees and scrutinized for materials and grants that don’t align with President Donald Trump’s cultural agenda.

Related: Fort Vancouver: A Historic Trade Post Of The Pacific Northwest

A March 27 presidential executive order aimed at the Smithsonian Institution titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” directs the Department of the Interior to ensure public markers “do not contain descriptions, depictions or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living, and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.”

Fort Vancouver National Historic Site is overseen by the National Park Service. Since federal layoffs began this year, the fort has lost about a third of its staff. The site also could not hire interns because of federal funding freezes.

The historic site is largely still functioning, but that’s thanks in part to help from the nonprofit Friends of Fort Vancouver. No interpretation materials have been changed at the fort, according to the group’s executive director Mary Rose. But, she said, there is a new “threatening” feeling of governmental oversight at the bookstore and gift shop their volunteers run.

Their books, which include Native American history, Indian wars materials and military history in the Pacific Northwest, must now be considered for content that could be seen as derogatory toward any American, living or dead.

“I can guarantee that there are derogatory statements made of all of those Americans back and forth,” Rose said.

Now, bookstores managed by “friends” groups across the nation like hers are being held to the ambiguous requirement of maintaining “truth and sanity,” according to Rose, reminiscent of the Smithsonian Institution executive order.

“That’s up to you to interpret, as its up to us to interpret I guess,” she said.