Field Notes

Sauvie Island, nestled between the Columbia River and Multnomah Channel, played a brief but pivotal role in the 19th-century beaver fur trade. In the 1830s, it was home to Fort William, an American outpost aimed at intercepting pelts bound for the British-controlled Hudson’s Bay Company. Its location made it a chokepoint for furs moving from the Willamette Valley and inland Columbia Basin to the Pacific, where they entered the China Circuit and eventually became fashionable beaver felt hats in Europe. Heavy trapping devastated local beaver populations and altered Sauvie’s wetlands, leaving a lasting ecological mark. Today, the island’s farms and wildlife refuges conceal a past deeply tied to global commerce and the era of “soft gold.”