The Willamette Valley is a fertile region of land, in northwest Oregon State, fed
largely by the Willamette River and its wealth of tributaries.
Throughout the mid-1800s, with Fort Vancouver as its economic and trading hub, the Willamette Valley became a focal point for farming,
settlement, trade, and conflict—between Indigenous and settler populations and over
US and British interests.1
1. J. S. Galbraith, The Hudson's Bay Company as an Imperial Factor, 1821–1869 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 177-91.