Columbia District

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Columbia District was a regional department of the Hudson's Bay Company, and included all of the Columbia River basin, extending as far north as the Thompson River. To the north of it was the New Caledonia fur district, in what is now north-central British Columbia. After 1825, the operations of New Caledonia and Columbia were integrated. The name "Columbia District" is the British equivalent of the American name, "Oregon Country"; they refer to the same area.

The district was originally administered from Fort Vancouver on the lower Columbia River. With the signing of the Oregon Treaty in 1846, however, the US-British North America boundary was fixed on the 49th parallel, and the U.S. part became known as the Oregon Territory. The administrative headquarters then shifted to Fort Victoria. In addition to Fort Vancouver, Fort Nez Percé (near present-day Wallula, Washington), Fort Langley, Spokane House, Fort Colville, and Kamloops House were other major trading posts in the district.

With the creation of the Crown Colony on the British mainland north of the then-Washington Territory in 1858, Queen Victoria chose to use Columbia District as the basis for the name Colony of British Columbia, i.e. the remaining British portion of the former Columbia District.