The Puget Sound Agricultural Company

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In the year 1825, Sir John McLoughlin built Fort Vancouver, just eighty miles from the mouth of the Columbia River. His choice for the location of this fort was greatly influenced by the fertile agricultural lands that surrounded it. These lands were soon to become acres of cultivated fields, orchards, and pastures which gave rise to plentiful crops of wheat, barley, oats, peas, potatoes and many other vegetables, along with fruit from the orchards, and cattle fattened upon the plain. As the crops became abundant, the ideas of fresh produce, meat and dairy products travelled.

Soon trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company, visiting naval ships, and even Russian traders in Alaska were eager to purchase anything and everything the farm could produce and supply. A deal was even negotiated with the Russian-American company to supply large amounts of produce at fixed prices including 560,000 pounds of wheat, 19,920 of flour, 16,160 pounds of peas and copious amounts of beef, bacon, and ham.

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Business was booming, enabling the Hudson's Bay Company to establish further farming lands: including Colwitz farm situated along the Colwitz River a branch of the Columbia, Fort Nisqually, a stock farm situated on Puget Sound, and finally Fort Langley situated upon the banks of the Fraser River.

These farming operations under John McLoughlin's direction became so successful that in some cases their profits even surpassed that of the fur trade.

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Finally in 1840, this success was recognized, and fifteen years after John McLoughlin began, the farms' accumulating growth and profits led to the creation of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company. This subsidiary of the Hudson's Bay Company was formed with essentially the same shareholders, officers, and management as its parent company. Thus the name was chosen from the new company's intention to further develop the Puget Sound region, around Fort Nisqually and up into the Colwitz river valley district. With the new company came increased commitments to the Russian-American Company for further produce and beef, and steadily more demand for products.

Yet all the success the Puget Sound Agricultural Company had enjoyed was disrupted in 1846 with the Oregon Boundary Dispute. This dispute resulted in the division of the 49th parallel as the line separating British and American Territory.

The hopes of the Hudson's Bay Company, as well as the new Puget Sound Agricultural Company were shattered. Their lands in Oregon would no longer be held for Britain. The main headquarters at Fort Vancouver were lost to the Americans and the remaining farm of Fort Langley and three small dairy farms around Fort Victoria could in no way be expected to make up for the loss.

There was also a need for more farms north of the boundary line, so with this opportunity, and in urgent desperation the Puget Sound Agricultural Company decided to set up farms on Vancouver Island. James Douglas now in charge of the western headquarters of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company divided the ten acres reserved for agricultural use around Fort Victoria into four farms. The four farms were Craigflower farm, View Field Farm and Colwood Farm and Constance Cove Farm. Bailiffs and their families were sent out from the old country to take charge of the farms. With all possible speed, they established View Field Farm in 1850, Colwood in 1851, as well as both Constance Cove and Craigflower farms in 1853.