Fort Langley – Langley, BC

Fort Langley was named after Thomas Langley, a director with HBC and dates from a time when the boundary between British and American possession of the trans-mountain west, known as the Columbia District to the British and Oregon Country to Americans, had not yet been decided.  Sir George Simpson, Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, realized that Fort Vancouver opposite of present-day Portland, Oregon might be lost to the Americans if the border did not follow the Columbia River. Fearing the 49th parallel north could become the demarcation line, Simpson ordered the Hudson’s Bay Company to construct the original Fort Langley in 1827 at a location 4 km downstream from its present site. (source)