Fort McLeod National Historic Site of Canada

Fort McLeod was designated as a National Historic Site of Canada in 1953. It is recognized because:

• founded in 1805, it was the site of the first fur-trading post built by the North West Company west of the Rocky Mountains;
• Indigenous Peoples, their territories, and labour were foundational to the fur trade in North America. Posts were often built near existing Indigenous settlements, trading routes and/or meeting places and became important sites of economic, social and cultural exchange.

By the early 19th century, the fur trade was expanding westward over the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and the North West Company found itself increasingly threatened by the Hudson’s Bay Company and American fur traders. As a result, in 1805, Simon Fraser of the North West Company led an expedition westward from Fort William on Lake Superior to secure the fur trade for the company on the west side of the Rocky Mountains. This newly discovered area was named New Caledonia.

Fraser sent a group of men up the Pack River to build a stockaded log fort at Trout Lake, which was later named Fort McLeod in honour of Archibald Norman, a senior North West Company partner. Fort McLeod became the base of the company’s fur trading operations in New Caledonia, and was the only liaison between the two sides of the Rocky Mountains for two decades. After the amalgamation of the North West and Hudson’s Bay companies in 1821, the fort remained an active trading post into the 20th century.