Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca was the "capital" of the rich fur-bearing Athabasca district. The exterior view of this old office building provides a good example of "post and fill," the most common mode of construction. The building is supported by uprights (you can see four across the front), and the spaces are filled in with horizontal squared logs or planks from two to four inches thick. The interior view gives an idea of the monumental amount of paperwork involved in running the fur trade. The clerks at the posts were required to keep a journal of daily activities and a careful account of the trade. Today a massive collection of such correspondence, journals, and account books is housed in the Hudson's Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg.
