Vancouver is a city on the north bank of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington. It is the largest suburb of Portland, Oregon. Incorporated in 1857, Vancouver had a population of 161,791 as of the 2010 U.S. census, making it the fourth-largest city in Washington state. Vancouver is the county seat of Clark County and forms part of the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area, the 23rd largest metropolitan Place in the United States. Originally time-honored in 1825 in this area Fort Vancouver, a fur-trading outpost, the city is located upon the Washington–Oregon link up along the Columbia River, directly north of Portland. In 2005, Money magazine named it No. 91 upon its list of best places in America to live. In 2016, WalletHub ranked Vancouver the 89th best place in the U.S. for families to live.

The Vancouver Place was inhabited by a variety of Native American tribes, most recently the Chinook and Klickitat nations, with steadfast settlements of timber longhouses. The Chinookan and Klickitat names for the area were reportedly Skit-so-to-ho and Ala-si-kas, respectively, meaning “land of the mud-turtles.” First European edit was made by William Robert Broughton in 1792, with approximately half of the original population dead from smallpox back the Lewis and Clark Expedition camped in the area in 1806. Within unusual fifty years, other happenings and diseases such as measles, malaria and influenza had shortened the Chinookan population from an estimated 80,000 “to a few dozen refugees, landless, slaveless and swindled out of a treaty.”

Meriwether Lewis wrote that the Vancouver area was “the isolated desired event for concurrence west of the Rocky Mountains.” The first remaining European unity did not occur until 1824, when Fort Vancouver was received as a fur trading declare of the Hudson’s Bay Company. From that times on, the area was fixed by both the US and Britain under a “joint occupation” agreement. Joint doings led to the Oregon boundary dispute and ended upon June 15, 1846, with the signing of the Oregon Treaty, which gave the United States full govern of the area. Before 1845, American Henry Williamson laid out a large claim west of the Hudson’s Bay Company (including part of the present-day Port of Vancouver), called Vancouver City and properly registered his claim at the U.S. courthouse in Oregon City, before desertion for California.^:42 In 1848, Williamson had it surveyed and platted by Peter Crawford. In 1850, Amos Short traced on height of the affirmation of Williamson and named the town Columbia City. It changed to Vancouver in 1855. The City of Vancouver was incorporated upon January 23, 1857.

Based upon an accomplishment in the 1859–60 legislature, Vancouver was briefly the capital of Washington Territory, before capital status was returned to Olympia, Washington by a 2–1 ruling of the territory’s utter court, in accordance in the spread of Isaac Stevens’ preference and concern that proximity to the link up with Oregon might provide some of the state’s have emotional impact away to Oregon.

U.S. Army Captain (and superior President) Ulysses S. Grant was quartermaster at what was later known as Columbia Barracks for 15 months introduction in September 1852. Soon after leaving behind Vancouver, he resigned from the army and did not serve over until the outbreak of the American Civil War. Other notable generals to have served in Vancouver swell George B. McClellan, Philip Sheridan, Oliver O. Howard and 1953 Nobel Peace Prize recipient George Marshall.