Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Not surprisingly, the co-custody arrangement proved a difficult proposition.
Negotiations - and posturing - between interested parties occurred until U.S.
President Polk and the British Prime Minister ultimately agreed to demarcate
British interests to the north of the 49th parallel and American interests to the
south.
During the years of co-custody, the U.S. had made overtures of expanding
its claim to the territory upwards to the 54th parallel (U.S. President Polk
running on the campaign promise: “Fifty-four forty or fight!”). However, the
U.S.-Mexico War tempered the appetite for expansion and the two parties
eventually settled their claims through the signing of the 1846 Oregon Treaty
(Price, 1967).
The land south of the 49th parallel became known as the “Oregon Territory”
with “Washington Territory” being formed in 1853. The land north of the
49th parallel remained unorganized until 1858 when the Colony of British
Columbia was formed, which was motivated in large part by the Fraser
Canyon Gold Rush and the subsequent fears of renewed American
expansionism. In 1866, the two British colonies of Vancouver Island and British
Columbia amalgamated when the Colony of British Columbia joined Canada
in 1871. Thus, the 49th parallel and marine boundaries established by the
Oregon Treaty became the Canadian-U.S. border.
The negotiations for the northern boundary along Alaska, the Yukon
Territory, and the province of British Columbia had a long history of dispute,
dating back from the Anglo-Russian convention of 1825. The United States
inherited the disputed territory with the Alaska Purchase in 1867. The line was
finally agreed upon by the federal governments through arbitration in 1903
with the Hay-Herbert Treaty, which, although settling the dispute between
Russia and the U.S., did not address issues of Indigenous claims to the land.
Although the Oregon Treaty provided, in theory, a clear boundary line along
the 49th parallel, minus Vancouver Island, which was preserved for British
interests, ambiguity still existed as to where that line actually was. It was not
until the Northwest Boundary Survey (1857-1861) that the land boundary was
defined, and it was not until 1872 that the water boundary was defined
between the Gulf Island and the San Juan Islands (which was predicated by
a pig being shot on San Juan Island, leading to the aptly named Pig War of
1859) (Vouri, 2008; Neering, 2011).
Through the 1850s the western part of North America began to feel the
impacts of the policy of Manifest Destiny. This, in conjunction with the
Donation Land Act of 1850 - which led into the general homestead policy -
facilitated an increased population with the arrival of promised land in the
Oregon Territory, including Washington (Evenden and Tuberville, 2006).
 
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