What does it say about your security situation when half the members of your protective shield are standing on their heads?
Really, is this any way to run a fort?
Yes, it is, actually.
That was one of the unexpected takeaways this spring during a maintenance project at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. The north wall of the stockade, also known as the fort’s palisade, was built in 1966. The other three walls were built in 1971, so some of the components of the fort — a replica of the trading center the Hudson’s Bay Company founded here more than 130 years ago — were due for replacement.
Alex Patterson, facility manager at the National Park Service Site at 1001 E. Fifth St., provided some commentary during The Columbian’s recent look at the project.
The most numerous elements of the stockade are 18-foot-long vertical logs known as pickets. The pickets are buried 4 feet deep, resulting in a wall that is 14 feet high.
Bottoms up!
It turns out that there is a pattern to the placement of those pickets. Every other log goes into the ground head first.
“That was noted in the construction drawings” of the 1960s, Patterson said. “But it wasn’t until we started pulling them out (for replacement) that it made sense.”
Logs are not perfect cylinders. As trees grow, they taper: They are wider at the base than they are 18 feet up the trunk.
If all the pickets had their bases buried in the ground, there would be gaps at the top of the fort’s wall. Alternating the ends of the logs that are in the ground — top, bottom, top, bottom — produces a more uniform palisade.
Patterson can’t feel too bad about replacing some pickets in the palisade after 45 years, by the way. The original fort on that site got pretty wobbly late in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s stay in town.
“Records from the Hudson’s Bay Company show they used buttresses to support it.”
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
