On your left, look for the massive red brick structure with its towering, sharply pointed Gothic steeple and the large circular window set above the main arched entrance. This imposing building is the Proto-Cathedral of Saint James the Greater. Its history is a rollercoaster of fierce turf wars and desperate escapes.
Consider the French Canadian workers for the Hudson's Bay Company stationed here in the eighteen thirties. In a bizarre twist of geography, they actually petitioned the bishop in their native Quebec, thousands of miles across a rugged continent, just to send priests to the wild Oregon Country.
The church responded by sending François Norbert Blanchet. His arrival here wasn't a triumphant march. It was a frantic run for his life. Blanchet was originally stationed in Walla Walla. Just eight weeks after arriving, the terrifying Whitman Massacre erupted when Cayuse tribal members killed a Presbyterian missionary and a dozen others. Escaping that escalating violence, Blanchet made a desperate retreat to Fort Vancouver for the armed protection of the Hudson's Bay Company and the United States Army. Because he sought refuge here, the modest wooden church they had just built was unexpectedly elevated to a full cathedral.
But safety was short lived. By eighteen forty nine, the United States Army had established the Vancouver Barracks, and a bitter, forty year power struggle began. The military and the Catholic Church fought tooth and nail over a six hundred forty acre land claim. This fierce legal battle dragged all the way to the United States Supreme Court. The church suffered a crushing defeat. The court ruled they were only entitled to about half an acre, effectively evicting them from their own sprawling footprint.
They were forced to relocate right here to Twelfth Street. Bishop Blanchet secretly entrusted Mother Joseph, a local missionary, with five thousand dollars, roughly one hundred fifty thousand today, to secure a new site. The timing was eerily perfect. On June twenty first, eighteen eighty nine, their original wooden church mysteriously burned to the ground. Arson was strongly suspected, though no one was ever charged. Amidst the flames, brave parishioners dashed inside to rescue priceless paintings Blanchet had brought from his travels. Six historic artworks survived and still hang inside today, underneath a spectacular ceiling painted with gold stars meant to remind parishioners of heaven.
By the time this grand masonry building was completed, it carried a staggering twenty five thousand dollar debt. That is nearly eight hundred thousand dollars today. That financial ruin caused intense behind the scenes pressure. A priest in Seattle spent years relentlessly urging the bishop to relocate to that rapidly growing port city. Burdened by the massive debt, the diocese leader finally abandoned Vancouver. He packed up the episcopal see, the official headquarters of the bishop, and moved away, leaving this grand structure behind as a mere parish church. It was not until two thousand thirteen that it was finally designated as a proto-cathedral, a term meaning former cathedral.
Oh, and there is one deeply mysterious detail. For decades, the diocese's first two bishops were buried in a crypt right inside. When church officials exhumed them in nineteen fifty five, a priest examining Blanchet's remains reportedly declared his body was incorrupt, a phenomenon where a body is miraculously preserved from natural decay.
Now, let us walk four minutes to our final destination, the very seat of county power, the Clark County Courthouse.
