The Vancouver Independent Archive

The settlement of Vancouver was founded by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1825. Strategically located along the Columbia River, the site was a primary headquarters for the British Company. In 1846, the United States and Britain settled on the 49^th parallel as the demarcation between U.S. and British interests, and Fort Vancouver became American. The city of Vancouver was incorporated into Washington Territory in 1857. By this time, the importance of the fort had declined, and agriculture became the major industry in the area. The region grew throughout the 1860s due to an influx of prospective gold miners headed north from California.

Founded in 1875, the Vancouver Independent began as a four-page weekly, published on Saturdays. In 1877, the Vancouver Independent expanded to an eight-page weekly, published on Thursdays. In an advertisement in the 1876 Geo. P. Rowell & Co.'s American Newspaper Directory, the Independent claimed to be the "official paper of three counties, and the only paper published in the seven counties of the Vancouver Land district of which it was the official paper." The 1877 circulation estimate was 520 readers. As the name suggests, the Independent was considered independent in its politics, but founder William Byron Daniels was a prominent member of the Republican Party.

Born in Ohio and raised in Oregon, Daniels was a lawyer who would go on to become mayor of Vancouver in 1888 and who served in the state House of Representatives from 1898 until his death in 1900. He was also secretary to the Constitutional Convention in 1878. Daniels sold the Independent to Thurston Daniels and John J. Beeson in 1878. Beeson had published the Saturday Reporter in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, from 1860 to1873 and served as editor and proprietor of the Independent until 1894. The Independent was then owned by Robert Lewis "Lloyd" DuBois until it ceased operations in 1910 and its subscription list was sold to the Vancouver Columbian. DuBois had been postmaster under the McKinley administration and was later influential in getting the bridge across the Columbia River built between Vancouver and Portland. In 1906, DuBois ran for mayor on a Reform ticket, but lost badly. In 1953, DuBois donated the archive of the Vancouver Independent to the Fort Vancouver Regional Library.