Life, News 
Camas history came alive during the Downtown Camas Association’s “Spring into History” First Friday event, held Friday, April 7, throughout downtown Camas.
Historian Virginia Warren was on hand at Caffe Piccolo for “Tea with Virginia,” an event that featured Warren’s stories from her childhood in Camas — including the time she was picked to lead her school’s band in a Camas parade, but had nothing to wear, so her industrious mother made her a costume from scratch, and her father cobbled some wood, paint and other parts to make her a “baton.”
A few participants, including Downtown Camas Association board member and former Georgia-Pacific paper mill employee Caroline Mercury, donned paper costumes to celebrate the town’s paper mill history.
Clark County Historical Museum Director Brad Richardson led a walking history tour through downtown Camas, pointing out historic buildings and telling stories of the city’s earliest business merchants and entrepreneurs.
At the Camas Public Library, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, library staff were on hand inside the Second Story Gallery to tell visitors about the library’s storied history, and to show off the gallery’s current installation, “A Century in the Books,” which details the library’s history — from its start as a 150-book collection inside Thayer’s Drugstore in April 1923, to the hiring of the library’s first children’s librarian in in 1949, to its reopening in 2021 following COVID-19 pandemic closures. The “A Century in the Books” installation will remain in the library’s Second Story Gallery through the end of April. For more information, visit cityofcamas.us/library/page/second-story-gallery.
