Fort Vancouver National Historic Site’s parade grounds hold special significance in the region’s history. Its verdant, treeless expanse and gentle southward slope make it one of Vancouver’s best vantage points. It’s easy to wonder about the generations who have been here before us, gazing upon the same landmarks and geographical features.
Now there’s a way to satisfy that curiosity, thanks to the new, self-guided tour available through the free National Park Service app. The tour, designed for cellphones or tablets, features nine stops along the north edge of the parade grounds, starting at the Visitor Center and ending at the barracks buildings. Each stop highlights a particular landmark or feature with a map location, historic photograph and several paragraphs of detail-rich text.
“We’re always looking for new and creative ways to engage with people,” said Fort Vancouver National Historic Site Curator Meagan Huff. “We’re looking to uncover new stories or stories that haven’t been heard as much as others.”
The tour, which covers roughly a century of history from the fort’s establishment to World War I, takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 90 minutes. The tour’s length depends on the tour-taker’s own pace, Huff said. Visitors can linger in each place or quickly move on to the next stop. Highlights include the Vancouver Barracks flagstaff, the gazebo bandstand and the barracks buildings. Perhaps the tour’s best feature is that it goes beyond well-known facts and figures, spotlighting workers and soldiers whose names have been, until now, lost in history.
If you go
What: Vancouver Barracks Parade Ground Tour (self-guided tour with cellphone or tablet)
Where: Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, starting at the Visitor Center, 1501 E. Evergreen Blvd., Vancouver
How: Download the free National Park Service app at nps.gov/subjects/digital/nps-apps.htm. Choose the self-guided tour for Fort Vancouver’s parade grounds. Allow 45-90 minutes, according to your pace. Brighten your cellphone display, as text is sometimes difficult to read in daylight. Bring reading glasses if necessary. Dress for the weather and wear comfortable walking shoes.
For blind or low vision visitors, the app provides audio descriptions of each tour stop. Directions between the tour stops are built into the app. These directions include alternate accessible routes that avoid uneven surfaces or narrower walkways.
A printed copy of the tour is available for checkout at the Visitor Center’s front desk.
Marie Hashimoto, an intern at the historic site, spent several months researching, writing and designing the tour with help from National Park Service staff. She delved deeply into Vancouver Barracks records, census records and other documents of the time, “uncovering new layers and perspectives,” she said in an email. Tour-takers can read about Chinese cook Mick Lai or Irish laundress Hannah Hartney and WWI soldier Martin Luther Kimmel. Hashimoto also includes stories about buffalo soldiers and Indigenous peoples such as the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce), Bannock, Paiute and Tukudika tribes.
“One of the most interesting and exciting parts of our job is to uncover those hidden stories and share them with the world,” Huff said.
The new tour isn’t just for tourists, said Huff, a lifelong Vancouver resident. It’s also a way for locals to learn something new about this familiar patch of land they’ve visited dozens or hundreds of times. For many in Clark County, the parade grounds are awash with memories of Fourth of July celebrations, field trips and family picnics. But we’re just one small part of Hashimoto’s “rich, diverse history” of people whose lives have unfolded around this grassy vista.
As of publication, 115 people have taken the tour since it became available on June 11, Huff said. The parade grounds tour is the second self-guided tour of the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site to appear on the NPS app; a self-guided tour of the reconstructed fort was launched in 2022, Huff said. Guided tours remain an important part of the Fort Vancouver experience, she said, but self-guided tours can include people whose schedules or circumstances make it difficult to visit during regular hours.
Huff said they were lucky that Hashimoto was able to devote so many hours to intensive research. (To get an idea of how intensive, consider that Fort Vancouver’s museum collection contains over 2.8 million artifacts, Huff said.) Hashimoto’s internship is nearly over and she’ll be moving on. Meanwhile, Huff will continue the search for stories to include in future tours.
