What If Britain Kept Oregon?

In the natural expansion of the United States, and of Britain’s colonies in what would become Canada, an eventual overlap was reached at the pacific coast; a territory known by the United States as Oregon, and to Britain as Columbia. The territory was tremendously valuable to British Canada and to the United States for its coastal access to the pacific; a coast which, though contested, was unoccupied by Spanish Mexico to the South, or Russian Alaska to the North.

The territory was largely divided into North and Southern halves by the Columbia River, with the area immediately surrounding the river serving as the major region of settlement by both groups. The land was fertile, allowing great opportunity for agricultural development, and the Columbia not only connected the inlands to the Pacific Ocean, but to various other American and Canadian water systems as well, making transport and travel to the region all the easier.

Now rather than populating the unclaimed land in the fashion we might imagine, it was originally only used as a fur-trapping and trading outpost, as well as a port for potential trade with China. Thus, American and British companies were the first to stake claims within the territory, and the first to settle the region with their own employees. This amounted to a very small population of only a few hundred, if even that, and these weren’t populations given to tremendous growth over time, but at the very least, they were a presence which reinforced either country’s territorial claim.