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Fort Colville was a U.S. Army post in the Washington Territory located north of current Colville, Washington. During its existence from 1859 to 1882, it was called "Harney's Depot" and "Colville Depot" during the first two years, and finally "Fort Colville". Brigadier General William S. Harney, commander of the Department of Oregon, opened up the district north of the Snake River to settlers in 1858 and ordered Brevet Major Pinkney Lugenbeel, 9th Infantry Regiment to establish a military post to restrain the Indians lately hostile to the U.S. Army's Northwest Division and to protect miners who flooded into the area after first reports of gold in the area appeared in Western Washington newspapers in July 1855.
It was common practice to use existing Indian trails to develop , and only make necessary improvements for the movement of artillery or supply trains.W. Turrentine Jackson, Wagon Roads West, p. 1, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, . Brevet Major Lugenbeel followed the long established Hudson's Bay Company Brigade Trail from the Fort Walla Walla area to Fort Colvile (Hudson's Bay Company), but had to leave the trail at the current Orin-Rice Road, two miles south of Colville, when the southernmost land claims of the Hudson's Bay Company started. Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens and the U.S. Army were ordered by the U.S. Department of State to honor land ownership claims by the Hudson's Bay Company.Isaac Stevens correspondence held at Yale University, copies viewed at Washington State Archive Olympia. Department of State, Records of Boundary and Claims Commissions and Arbitration, RG 7C No. 15, Treaty of 1946, Group B, map L, of Hudson's Bay Company's land claim at Colville. W. T. The road became the Fort Walla Walla Fort Colville Military Road.Stevens County Historical Society, The Fort Walla Walla Fort Colville Military Road Project, Colville, Washington, September 3, 2014. Lugenbeel's command arrived from Fort Walla Walla on June 20, 1859.
Major Lugenbeel was appointed special agent for the Indians in the region located near Fort Colville. After Lugenbeel departed, the Indian agent was a civilian. U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant and the U.S. Congress to reduce corruption in the handling of Indian Affairs created, in 1869, the Board of Indian CommissionersDurham, N. W., "History of the City of Spokane and Spokane County Washington From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, Illustrated Volume I", p. 96, 1912, Spokane, The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company The Indian agent for the Colville people, Sinixt, Sanpoil, Syilx, Spokane people, and early on the Pend d'Oreilles moved from the fort to Chewelah, Washington by 1872.
The U.S. Northwest Boundary Survey personnel arrived at the fort on December 3, 1859, but the buildings assigned to them were not complete. Temperatures were down to −22 °F and they were housed in tents until December 19, 1859. The newly competed buildings were solid and warm and home to the survey personnel for two years as they surveyed and cut the border on the 49th parallel to the Rocky Mountains.
A small town developed outside the post, Pinkney City, Washington, the name derived from Lugenbeel's first name. In 1860, Pinkney City, became the original Spokane County, Washington county seat, and in 1864, when Spokane County and Stevens County, Washington merged, it remained the county seat for Stevens County.Newton, Carl Abbot and Carver, Fred E, The Evolution of Washington Counties, 1978, Yakima, Washington, Yakima Valley Genealogical Society. From 1860 to January 1864, Spokane County used the fort Prison for any incarcerations.Spokane/Stevens County Commissioners Journal Book A 1860-1883, p. 1–35, Stevens County, Washington.
On September 28, 1860, First Lieutenant August Kautz arrived at Fort Colville with 150 recruits.Kautz, August V., Journal of the march of a detachment of U. S. recruits en route for Oregon from Coeur d'Alene to Colville Depot commanded by 1st Lt August V. Kautz, 4th Inf, Colville Valley. September 28, 1860, microform from the University of Montana of original at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Purchased from William Reese Company on the Frederick W. & Carrie S. Beinecke Fund for Western Americana, 1995 His journal recorded the route from Coeur d'Alene to the fort along the road built by the U. S. Northwest Boundary Commission above the Spokane River and then along the Fort Walla Walla Fort Colville Military Road.
On July 11, 1862, B and C Companies, 1st Regiment Washington Territory Volunteer Infantry, took over the fort.
On May 26, 1865, one company of the 1st Oregon Volunteer Infantry Regiment took over the fort.
On 6 May 1867, G Company, 23rd Infantry Regiment, took over responsibility for the fort.
On February 10, 1869, Company D, 23rd Infantry, took over manning the fort.
On June 10, 1872, E Company, 21st Infantry Regiment, took over manning the fort.
On October 21, 1880, Fort Spokane was established by the U.S. Army at the junction of the Columbia River and .Oldham, Kit (March 4, 2003). "U.S. Army establishes Fort Spokane at the junction of the Spokane and Columbia rivers in 1882". Essay 5358. HistoryLink. Retrieved 2014-9-9. Cavalry often stayed at Fort Colville due to a scarcity of hay and grain around Fort Spokane until the summer of 1885.
One of the last actions from the fort was First Lieutenant's Henry H. Pierce's expedition from Fort Colville to Puget Sound, Washington Territory by way of Lake Chelan and Skagit River August and September 1882.
Nine months after the garrison was withdrawn, Commanding General of the United States Army William Tecumseh Sherman visited Fort Colville in August 1883 in a tour of Army posts in the west.
The bodies of soldiers who died while serving at the fort were disinterred and moved to the Presidio of San Francisco and the San Francisco National Cemetery. Those that stayed in the area are likely buried at the Evergreen Cemetery established immediately west of the old fort.
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