Fort Yamhill Block
Block of wood from Fort Yamhill
2000.010.001
This is a block of wood is from Fort Yamhill.
History of Fort Yamhill
The Fort Yamhill Blockhouse is one of the few architectural remnants from the era of wars and treaties with Native people in western Oregon, from 1849 to 1860. The U.S. Army constructed the building at Fort Yamhill, near present-day Valley Junction, in March-April 1856. In 1911, preservationists moved the structure thirty miles northwest to a park in Dayton to save it from demolition and as a commemorative of Joel Palmer’s tenure as Oregon superintendent of Indian Affairs (1853-1857).
Fort Yamhill was built to help keep the Native people on the newly created Reservation, and to help keep the conflicts down between settlers and the Native people. The structure stood at the boundary of the Grand Ronde Reservation and private farmland, on a serviceable road that facilitated the shipment of goods from Dayton, Corvallis, Oregon City, and Portland to supply the fort and reservation.