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Fort Edmonton (also named Edmonton House) was the name of a series of Trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) from 1795 to 1914, all of which were located on the north banks of the North Saskatchewan River in what is now central Alberta, Canada. It was one of the last points on the Carlton Trail, the main overland route for Metis freighters between the Red River Colony and the points west and was an important stop on the York Factory Express route between London, via Hudson Bay, and Fort Vancouver in the Columbia District. It also was a connection to the Great Northland, as it was situated relatively close to the Athabasca River whose waters flow into the Mackenzie River and the Arctic Ocean. Located on the farthest north of the major rivers flowing to the Hudson Bay and the HBC's shipping posts there, Edmonton was for a time the southernmost of the HBC's forts.
From 1795 to 1830 it was located in four successive locations. Prior to 1821 each location was paired with a Fort Augustus of the North West Company (NWC). Sometimes other fur companies also built forts nearby as well.Ream, The Fort on the Saskatchewan, p. 17
The fifth and final Fort Edmonton, 1830–1914, was the one that evolved into present-day Edmonton.
Fort Edmonton was also called Fort-des-Prairies, by animal trapping and coureurs des bois, and amiskwaskahegan or "Beaver Hills House" in Cree language, the most spoken Indigenous language in the region during the 19th century. Fort-des-Prairies Naming Edmonton: from Ada to Zoie, (ed.) Merrily K. Aubrey, University of Alberta Press, Edmonton (Alta.), 2004, Edmonton Historical Board, Heritage Sites Committee. p. 18
In the late 18th century, the HBC, established in 1670, was in fierce competition with the NWC for the fur trade in Rupert's Land.
As one company established a fur trading post, the other would counter by building its post in close proximity or even farther upstream. Expansion up the Saskatchewan River was heated in the 1790s.
Edmonton House, and the subsequent forts, was named by John Peter Pruden, clerk to the HBC's George Sutherland. The Fort was named after Edmonton, Middlesex, England, birthplace of both Pruden and HBC Deputy Governor Sir James Winter Lake.Frederick William Howay: Builders of the West (Ryerson, 1929)
In addition to the NWC-HBC rivalry, two or three competing fur-trading posts were also built nearby. Grants Company, independent fur buyer Francois Beaubien and the new North West Company (XY Company) reportedly built forts near Fort Edmonton/Fort Augustus located at Fort Saskatchewan and Rossdale.
In 1802, due to several years of low fur returns and increasingly scarce firewood, Fort Edmonton and Fort Augustus were moved upstream, to what is now the Rossdale area of downtown Edmonton. This area had been a gathering place for aboriginals in the region for thousands of years, in part due to its location along the old North Trail, AKA the Wolf's Track.
It is possible the HBC officials on the ground might have adopted a new name for the new fort. But an 1800 directive from HBC main offices in London had instructed them to stop switching names. (Later after Fort Edmonton was moved to its third site, the head office staff instructed them to stop using the same name for differently-located forts. It is from this muddle that the present-day City of Edmonton bears the name that it does.)
The first woman of European descent known to live in this region was the French-Canadian Marie-Anne Lagimodière (née Gaboury), who was also noteworthy as the grandmother of Louis Riel. She had accompanied her fur trader husband, Jean-Baptiste Lagimodière, into the west shortly after their marriage in Trois-Rivières, Lower Canada, and was known to take part in hunting expeditions. The couple lived in Fort Augustus from 1807 to 1811.
John Rowand, the Chief Factor at Fort Edmonton from 1823 to 1854, first worked at Fort Augustus from 1804 to 1806; he was stationed there again from 1808 onward.
Evidence of this Fort Edmonton was found in 2012, when crews were excavating under a demolished machine shop at the Rossdale Power Plant.
Both Fort Augustus and Fort Edmonton moved to the mouth of White Earth Creek, 100 km northeast of modern Edmonton at the northernmost point of the North Saskatchewan near present-day Smoky Lake, Alberta. The fort was also known as Fort White Earth, or Terre Blanche. This is located in Township 58-16-W4.Geographic Board of Canada. Place-names of Alberta. Ottawa: Published for the Geographic Board by the Department of the Interior, 1928
While the Hudson's Bay Company and North West Company still operated separate posts, in direct competition with each other, the two posts were built inside a shared palisade.
This post was only in operation for two years because Cree trappers were selling their furs at other posts to avoid violent confrontations with the Blackfoot, yet the generally more southerly Blackfoot refused to travel so far off of their normal circles and consequently took their trade south to American furtrading posts.
After its abandonment in 1812, the forts fell into ruin and little remains of them. There is no official signage on the site. Perhaps a local name for a creek that enters the Saskatchewan on the south side of the river opposite the site commemorates the old forts - its name is Fort Creek.
Fort Edmonton and Fort Augustus moved back to the second site at the Rossdale flats, it having proven to be a site more amenable for Natives to visit. This was the start of recorded permanent human occupancy in the present city of Edmonton.
A crew of workers was sent from Fort Edmonton at White Earth to begin construction of a new post at the Rossdale location on October 6, 1812. Post Factor James Bird marked out the layout of the new post on October 10.Edmonton House Journals, Correspondence and Reports, 1806-1821 (published by the Historical Society of Alberta), p. 182 James Bird's son William Bird was born at Fort Edmonton and later played a role in the naming of today's Mill Creek.
In the years immediately succeeding that move, the two furtrading companies, the HBC and the NWC, had a strong and violent rivalry, peaking with the Battle of Seven Oaks at Winnipeg.
Violence broke out at Edmonton in 1826 when fort staff fought off an attempt by several Nakoda to steal some of the fort's horses. Six Nakoda were killed and five Bay men wounded in a brisk exchange of gunfire and arrow-flight. Already by that time, horses were being kept at Horse Hill in what is now northeast Edmonton.Binnema and Enns, Edmonton House Journal, 1821-1826
The Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company merged in 1821. After the amalgamation, the companies used the Hudson's Bay Company name. The name Fort Augustus was dropped, and John Rowand, the former NWC factor, became chief trader of the HBC's Fort Edmonton. Fort Edmonton became the headquarters for the Saskatchewan District of Rupert's Land, which stretched from the Canadian Rockies in the west to Fort Carlton in the east; from the 49th parallel in the south to Lesser Slave Lake in the north. In 1823, Rowand was promoted to chief factor. Rowand managed Saskatchewan District from Fort Edmonton until his death in 1854.
Due to floods in the late 1820s, a new fort was built on the terrace above the riverflats in 1830. This fifth and final fort stood for 85 years, though its use as a fur trading post was phased out starting in 1891. During its final years, the Fort co-existed with the Alberta Legislature Building. The Legislative Building opened in 1913 on a terrace just north of the fort on the site of "Rowand's Folly", the large house built for Chief Factor John Rowand. Canadian Parliamentary Review – Article
Rowand's administration from the 1830s onward coincided with a great change in the Saskatchewan District. For the first time, missionaries, artists, and curious travellers came to Edmonton to visit, sometimes for extended periods. This frustrated Rowand to some degree. Prior to this time, the only Europeans to come that far into the west were men on some sort of company business.
With Rowand making Edmonton his home, the fort became an important centre in the west. It was a necessity for any traveller going any further west of Edmonton to go through there for provisions first. Rowand constructed a three-storey house in the heart of the fort for the exclusive use of him and his family, denoting his station to his subordinates, visitors and trade partners alike. This was nicknamed "Rowand's Folly."
Father Pierre-Jean De Smet spent the winter of 1845-46 at Fort Edmonton having traveled and explored from Oregon Country to meet the natives of the Rocky Mountains.
In 1852, the Oblate missionary Albert Lacombe first visited Fort Edmonton. With Rundle having trouble controlling the department in 1848, Lacombe easily took up residence in the former Methodist chapel. Lacombe took pity on the fur trade labourers, opining that, "during the summer months, Hudson's was as hard as that of the African slave.". He found little sympathy for the workers from John Rowand or the HBC clerks. The following year, Lacombe moved to Lac St. Anne, but had a new Catholic chapel constructed in the fort in 1857 (but did not dwell there); this chapel lasted nearly twenty years before being moved outside of the fort.
A Methodist follow-up to Robert Rundle, Reverend Thomas Woolsey, was dispatched to Edmonton in 1852. His arrival in the fort coincided with Lacombe's residency in the former Methodist chapel, a discovery which distressed Woolsey. Conflicts and private frustrations with Catholic missionaries, and failures to convert Catholics to Protestantism, marked Woolsey's twelve-year residence at the fort.
In 1854, the mission St. Joachim was officially founded in turn at Fort-des-Praires (Fort Edmonton).
The Hudson's Bay Company relinquished Rupert's Land to the Government of Canada in 1868, pursuant to the Rupert's Land Act 1868, thus ending the HBC's administration of the vast territory and beginning an era of settlement in the 1870s.
By the 1890s, the fort was in disrepair and largely abandoned. The Hudson's Bay Company transitioned to retail stores, and business in Edmonton ran from one of those instead.
Captain John Palliser stayed in Fort Edmonton for a time in 1858 while on his famous expedition. With the help of the factor's wife, Palliser held a ball there. John Palliser and Henry Hind – The Arctic and More – 19th Century – Pathfinders and Passageways
In 1859, the 9th Earl of Southesk visited on his way to the Rocky Mountains, hoping that the fresh mountain air would improve his health. Alberta museum lands bulk of rare aboriginal collection He recorded his observations in the 1874 book Saskatchewan and Rocky Mountains and also published a book on Cree syllabics in 1875.
Viscount William Milton and William Butler Cheadle came through Edmonton in 1862/3 and published accounts of their journey.
| + Chief factors at Fort Edmonton |
| Started Edmonton House to compete with NWC Fort Augustus. |
| The fort was relocated twice during Bird's tenure. |
| HBC and NWC merger coincides with the end of Heron's tenure; afterward, Fort Augustus was absorbed into Fort Edmonton. |
| Longest-serving chief factor at Edmonton. |
| Rowand's chief trader and son-in-law by country marriage. |
| Final years of service; died May 30, 1854. |
| Later a Canadian senator. |
| Transitioned to the retail store located on Jasper Avenue in what is now Edmonton's downtown core. The outward face of an old HBC department store still exists there, but the building is presently inhabited by a branch of the U of A and the Edmonton Public Library. It is currently known as Enterprise Square. |
In 1959, the site of the fifth Fort Edmonton (Fort Edmonton V) was also made a National Historic Site and plaque was installed near the Alberta Legislature building.
Similarly the Fort Edmonton-Fort Gary Trail was also named a National Historic Site and a plaque for it was installed in Edmonton in 1996.
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