The city of Edmonton is named after a fur trade post built in 1795 by the Hudson’s Bay Company in direct response to a North West Company post called Fort Augustus that had opened one year earlier on the same river bank. Two rival firms, one stretch of the North Saskatchewan, and the commercial competition that founded the modern Alberta capital. If you want the founding story of Edmonton, you start with two companies that did not like each other building palisades within easy walking distance.
A North West Company post arrives first
In 1794 the North West Company put Fort Augustus on the north bank of the North Saskatchewan River near present-day Lamoureux. The site sat at a productive bend in the river where Indigenous trade routes converged and where canoe brigades could land safely. The NWC had been pushing west aggressively for the better part of a decade. Fort Augustus was the company’s next forward node into central Alberta.
The HBC builds next door within a year
One year later, in 1795, the Hudson’s Bay Company built Fort Edmonton on the same river bank, close enough that the two posts effectively shared their fortifications. The HBC was answering an obvious threat. If the North West Company had a working post on the upper North Saskatchewan and the HBC did not, the HBC would lose the entire river basin’s fur trade. Building right next door cost less than building further away and trying to take customers back.
Why both companies pooled the palisade
The Lamoureux complex is one of the most interesting moments in early Alberta commercial history because it shows that competition and cooperation lived inside the same operation.
- The two companies competed openly for furs from the same Indigenous suppliers.
- They cooperated on physical security, water access, and basic mutual aid.
- A serious raid or a hard winter could kill any small post in the country. Neither company could afford that risk on its own.
The trade arithmetic
Fur prices in London were high enough that both companies could survive a profit-split if they kept overheads down. Shared fortifications were one of the easiest overhead cuts available. It is a classic example of cooperation between rivals where the country is too hard to absorb solo costs.
The forts that moved upstream four times
Fort Augustus and Fort Edmonton did not stay at Lamoureux. The joint complex moved upstream several times over the next four decades as the fur supply shifted and as the river bank conditions changed. The final iteration of Fort Edmonton settled on the high south bank where the modern Alberta Legislature now stands. That is why the Legislature grounds sit on commercial real estate first selected by a fur company. The capital was founded as a business decision and then put on top of by every layer of public life that followed.
The Lamoureux site was designated a National Historic Site of Canada on May 25, 1923, and is listed on the Canadian Register under ID 18985.
What this says about Edmonton’s commercial DNA
The buff opinion is simple. Edmonton is a commercial city by birth. The Legislature came later. The municipal government came later. The university came much later. The original reason Edmonton sits where it sits is that two private companies thought the location penciled out for trade. Modern Edmonton still works the same way. The companies have changed. The freight, the energy, the agriculture, the technology all move through the city for reasons that look like the 1795 logic if you draw the map correctly. Geography pays rent, and Edmonton has been collecting it for two hundred and thirty-one years.
Listed on the registry. Fort Augustus and Fort Edmonton appears on the Canadian Register of Historic Places as Site ID 18985 and was designated a National Historic Site of Canada on May 25, 1923.
Related reading from the series. Fort Chipewyan and the founding of Alberta commerce. Fort White Earth and the quiet cooperation behind the rivalry.
