Fort Vancouver
Fort Vancouver offers an impressive insight into frontier history, with much to interest older children.
Open
Open year round except January 1, November 25, and December 24, 25, and 31. 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday. On Sundays, the Visitor Center is open 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. and the reconstructed fort is open noon to 5:00 p.m.
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Why you should visit
- Very impressive full-scale reconstructed fort from the 19th Century, complete with tall pointy barricade, cannons and historic gardens.
- Friendly rangers / volunteers in period costume to ready, willing and able to explain everything to you.
- Pretty half mile walk through the park from the visitor center to the fort. Or you could drive.
- Playground at the visitor center, restrooms.
Given how impressive this site is, I was somewhat surprised that it wasn’t busier and that more people don’t talk about it and I had managed to live in Portland for eight years without seeing it before. Perhaps it’s one of those places that local children are dragged around on school trips, thus denuding it of any further interest, much like being made to read Shakespeare at fourteen. Overall the historic virtues of the site – which are considerable – were lost on my five-year-old, but I think there’s much to interest older children.
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First posted: May 23, 2012; last updated: April 16, 2014.
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If you find any factual innaccuracies in this post, please email me via richard at thingstodoinportland dot org so I can fix it for everyone. Thanks in advance!
612 E. Reserve Street, Vancouver, WA 98661 [Google map].
Vox Populi
The good people of Yelp have posted 54 reviews of Fort Vancouver with an average rating of 4.5 out of 5.
