Visiting Vancouver Barracks

The Vancouver Barracks Parade Ground Walking Tour, developed in 2024 and available on the NPS App, offers visitors a guided tour around this historic site at their own pace. NPS Photo / M. Huff

From the beginning of the National Park Service’s custody of Vancouver Barracks, Fort Vancouver National Historic Site staff envisioned a place of recreation and learning for the public. After years of work, and with improved, accessible routes and programming, they finally welcomed visitors to parts of the site that were previously difficult to reach.

New ways to navigate

Many visitors’ first experience of the Barracks is the new main parking lot off East 5th Street, with improved circulation for vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians. From there, pedestrians and bicyclists can take Alvord Road – a peaceful, paved route past the historic buildings that connects to the Park Road, with access to the Fort and the Visitor Center. Alvord Road likely runs along the same route as paths used during pre-contact and fur trade eras.

Periodically, Fort Vancouver NHS is able to offer tours of the Barracks. During a guided program, visitors learn about significant figures in Vancouver Barracks' history – like Ulysses S. Grant and Oliver Otis Howard – as well as those underrepresented in the written history.

Bringing history to life

In 2021, Fort Vancouver NHS offered a new walking tour and outdoor exhibit of life at the barracks in the 1880s. This was a decade of transition for the barracks – Hudson’s Bay fur traders had left the fort, and World War I had not yet begun. But life was anything but tranquil there.

During the tours, Curator Meagan Huff shared stories of the people who served, worked, and raised their families at the barracks, including stories of Chinese immigrants who worked on Officers’ Row and incarcerated Native Americans during the Indian Wars. (The online exhibit is available here.)

“The 1880s was a decade that has a surprising amount of relevancy to problems that are facing our society today,” Huff said in a press release for the tours. Visitors discussed lessons to be learned from that time period, and how the events of the late 1800s influenced the 20th century.

Bringing stories to life and making them relevant to today’s visitors is exactly what Fort Vancouver staff had in mind when they developed the Master Plan for the Barracks.** **You are invited to experience the new Vancouver Barracks.

These are just a few of the ways the public – either through partnership programs or drop-in visits – are experiencing the new Vancouver Barracks. It’s a place where people can learn from, engage with, and give back to their community.

Part of a series of articles titled
Ten Years at Vancouver Barracks.

Previous:
Beneath the Barracks: Archeology Considerations for Utilities Upgrades

Next:
The Great American Outdoors Act Revitalizes Barracks Building

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• Fort Vancouver National Historic Site

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