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Photos courtesy Russ Carmack & Metro Parks
Granary
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Photos courtesy Russ Carmack & Metro Parks
1855 Factor's House
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Photos courtesy Russ Carmack & Metro Parks
Bastion
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Photos courtesy Russ Carmack & Metro Parks
Candelelight Tour
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Photos courtesy Russ Carmack & Metro Parks
Chickens and gardens
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Jenn Chushcoff
Factor's House parlor
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Russ Carmack
Ft Nisqually gate
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Photos courtesy Russ Carmack & Metro Parks
Fort Christmas
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Photos courtesy Russ Carmack & Metro Parks
Ft Nisqually
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Photos courtesy Russ Carmack & Metro Parks
Living History Day
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Photos courtesy Russ Carmack & Metro Parks
Sale Shop
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Russ Carmack
School tour
By Claire Keller-Scholz
Imagine a cool, misty morning on Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest. Visible through the early morning light is a palisade, with rooftops peeking up over the top of the fence and a curl of smoke rising from a chimney within. A man clad in a wool blanket coat welcomes you into the building just inside the gateway. Inside, the scent of wood smoke wafts through the air as you stand surrounded by trade goods and stacks of furs waiting to be shipped out from this frontier outpost. It is an unfamiliar scene in our mind’s eye, one that we associate with long ago and far away.
At Fort Nisqually Living History Museum, this scene is brought to life through programming, events, and everyday interactions between historic interpreters in period clothing and the visiting public. With two historic buildings dating from the 1850s and seven other recreated structures to tour, opportunities to explore hands-on-history await around every corner. “The fort offers a unique opportunity to really get a feel for the past,” said Site Manager Mike McGuire, “the scale of the structures and the native plants set the scene for learning about our ancestors.”
Located in Point Defiance Park, Tacoma, Washington, Fort Nisqually was moved from its original site in DuPont, WA in the 1930s by the Young Men’s Business Club of Tacoma, and rebuilt by a coalition of local work relief programs. Thanks to Works Progress Administration assistance, the restored fort opened in 1940 as a museum. A picnic shelter built by the WPA remains as a gathering place just outside the Fort, and has seen many family picnics and events in the years since its completion. Today, as you drive through the beautiful, wooded Point Defiance Park, emerging out into the clearing that surrounds the Fort is much like stepping through a portal into another time and place.
The Hudson’s Bay Company established Fort Nisqually in 1833 as a fur trading post as well as an agricultural outpost for subsistence farming. By 1855, the date the museum portrays, American territory surrounded this British establishment and the fort faced increasing pressure from American settlers looking to take advantage of the arable land. Additionally, the focus of Fort Nisqually’s operations had shifted from fur trade and subsistence farming to commercial agricultural enterprises with the establishment of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, a subsidiary of the HBC. The PSAC raised cattle, sheep, and horses along with crops such as wheat, barley, rye, and peas across the 160,000 acres claimed by the company on Puget Sound. Scottish-born physician William Fraser Tolmie, an officer of the HBC with the rank of Chief Factor, managed Fort Nisqually and the surrounding farms. Completed in 1855, his dwelling house is one of the two original buildings now residing in Point Defiance Park. Today, the restored interior includes a small library of books from Tolmie’s personal collection along with historically furnished rooms. Visitors will learn about Dr. Tolmie and his family and the many cultural influences brought together at Fort Nisqually.
The HBC employed workers from a variety of ethnic backgrounds including French-Canadians, Native Americans, metis or mixed-blood, Scots, Irishmen, Englishmen, and Hawaiians. From fur trappers to carpenters and farmers, many different kinds of people lived and worked at Fort Nisqually. The diversity of the employees was matched only by the variety of trade goods available in the fort’s Sale Shop. Workers, Native Americans, and American settlers came to trade for necessities such as flour and gunpowder, as well as for luxuries like cashmere shawls, beads, and decorative brass bells. Many trade items from the nineteenth century are on exhibit in the buildings at Fort Nisqually today, in addition to those preserved in artifact storage. To learn more about some of the trade goods that passed through the fort’s doors, check out selections from the collection on our website: http://www.metroparkstacoma.org/online-fort-catalog/
As a living history museum, today Fort Nisqually celebrates the past with events such as:
- Sewing to Sowing featuring activities based around textiles and agriculture;
- Queen Victoria’s Birthday, a celebration with games, music, cannon fire, and more;
- The annual Brigade Encampment, with over 150 volunteer re-enactors in period clothing who engage visitors with hands-on crafts such as rope-making and fire-starting, cooking and black powder among other skill demonstrations;
- Fall and winter events including Candlelight Tour and Christmas at the Fort celebrations.
Additionally, on weekends throughout the summer the fort hosts visiting artists and features a craft for visitors to try out for themselves, such as finger-weaving, calligraphy, beading, and making cyanotypes (an early form of photograph).
The fort is open daily in the summer and five days a week throughout the year, and every visit brings with it the opportunities to touch, smell, and experience history through interactive permanent exhibits as well as rotating temporary exhibits highlighting items not usually on display. Past exhibits have included “Escape, Intrigue, and a Shot of Whiskey” telling the story of HBC employee John McLeod and his family, “Tolmie the Naturalist” about Dr. Tolmie’s excursions into Pacific Northwest botany as a young man, and most recently “Favourite Things,” highlighting the beautiful, the unusual, and the ordinary items from the collection. The upcoming temporary exhibit, “Across the Pond,” traces the journey of a beaver pelt from when a trapper first gathers the fur to its ultimate destination as an elegant hat made in England. To find out about the most recent events and presentations, check out the Fort’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/FortNisqually or website http://www.metroparkstacoma.org/fort-nisqually-living-history-museum/.
The exhibits and events at Fort Nisqually aim to engage individuals and families with activities and knowledge they can take home. “Fort Nisqually allows visitors to become part of the continuum of history,” said Curator Claire Keller-Scholz, “helping keep the memories of the people who worked here alive, keeping their story and the lessons of history alive today.” Representing a fur trading post in the middle of a changing nineteenth-century world, Fort Nisqually Living History Museum illustrates the familiar within the exotic and gives visitors the chance to make new memories while preserving those of the past.