the exclusion of the other. And Their said Majesties will mutually aid each other to maintain for their subjects free access to the port of Nootka against any other nation which may attempt to establish there any sovereignty or dominion". Unresolved borders Although the Nootka Crisis originally revolved around the issue of sovereignty and the northern limits of New Spain, the basic issues were left unresolved. Both sides took up positions regarding the border, with Britain desiring it set just north of San Francisco and Spain at the Strait of Juan de Fuca. After Vancouver rejected Bodega's proposal of the Strait of Juan de Fuca the border question was not again addressed and instead left unspecified. The third convention addressed the issue of sovereignty only for the port of Nootka Sound itself. U.S. claims The fledgling United States had no claim in this area at the time of the first Nootka Convention. US claims in the region began with Robert Gray's Columbia River expedition. They were strengthened and enlarged by the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the establishment of Fort Astoria by the Pacific Fur Company. The Spanish claims to the Pacific Northwest were acquired by the United States by the Adams-Onís Treaty, signed in 1819. The United States government argued that it had acquired a right of exclusive sovereignty from Spain. This position led to a dispute with Britain known as the Oregon boundary dispute. This dispute was not resolved until the signing of the Oregon Treaty in 1846, which divided the disputed territory and established what later became the international boundary between Canada and the United States. Although the Nootka Conventions theoretically opened the Pacific Northwest coast from northern California to Alaska to British settlement, the advent of the Napoleonic Wars distracted any efforts towards this (as recommended by Vancouver at the time) and the proposed colony in the region was to be abandoned, The Hudson's Bay Company, the remaining British presence in the region, was averse to settlement and any economic activity other than its own, such that settlement and resource development did not take place to any degree until the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858, which formalized British claims on the mainland still residual from the Nootka Conventions into the Colony of British Columbia. See also Fort San Miguel Santa Cruz de Nuca References Pre-Confederation British Columbia History of Vancouver Island Naval history of Canada