Alaskan History
Fort Yukon, Alaska, June, 1867. From Alaska, and Its Resources, circa 1870. Etching from an original sketch by author William Healey Dall, redrawn by or with the assistance of Henry Elliott.
Alexander Hunter Murray and The Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Yukon • 1847-48 Near the Confluence of the Porcupine and Yukon Rivers North America, with its vast forests and wildlife, led to the continent becoming a major supplier of fur pelts for the garment trades of Europe, where fur was relied on to make warm clothing, a critical consideration prior to the organization of coal distribution for heating. The Hudson’s Bay Company was a British trading firm, incorporated in England in 1670, and the oldest commercial corporation in North America. In 1821 the company merged with its main competitor, the North West Company, established in 1779, combining 97 trading posts of the North West Company with 76 from the Hudson's Bay Company. Maintaining the Hudson’s Bay name, the company dominated early trading in the United States and Canada, especially the fur trade. On the 25th of June, 1847, Chief Trader and artist Alexander Hunter Murray of the Hudson's Bay Company established a fur trading post and stockaded fort in northeastern Russian America, just upstream from where the Porcupine River empties into the mighty Yukon, at a point slightly north of the Arctic Circle. Named Fort Yukon, Murray’s trading post would become one of the most valued by the Company, reaping the rich harvest of furbearing animals indigenous to the Alaskan interior, and the town which formed around the logistically well-placed post would play an important role in the history of Alaska.
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