Walk past Crown Park on a Wednesday evening this month and you will find a splash pad running, farmer's market tents halfway through breaking down two blocks over, and a line of strollers parked at the treehouse-themed playground. None of that existed a year ago. For two summers, the park that generations of Camas kids learned to swim in sat behind orange fencing while dump trucks rotated through the gravel lot where the pool used to be.
This is the first full August since construction began that Crown Park has been open, and it is worth pausing on what that actually means, because the park that reopened in July is not simply the old one with fresh paint. The pool is gone for good. The playground theme was picked by elementary school kids, not a design committee. And the new sport court is deliberately missing a feature a lot of residents asked for. Understanding those choices tells you more about how this neighborhood actually operates than any generic "best parks in Camas" roundup will.
Two Summers Behind a Fence
Construction on Crown Park's $6.3 million remodel started in June 2024 and was originally expected to wrap in a little over a year. It didn't. A restroom building needed to house the splash pad's mechanical equipment ran into delivery delays, which pushed the interactive water feature's public opening into 2026 even after the concrete had been poured. The inclusive playground opened first, its fence coming down on February 27, 2026. The sport court and the rest of the grounds followed that spring.
The city marked the finish line with an all-day event on July 2, 2026, tying the celebration to the national America 250 recognition, complete with a bike rodeo, a relay race between city commissioners and council members, and a concert to close out the night. Washington State Representative David Stuebe and Camas Mayor Steve Hogan both showed up for the ribbon cutting, and the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Coalition later credited a $500,000 state grant, paired with a smaller $2,500 award from the Parks Foundation of Clark County, with helping get the 7.3-acre park across the finish line.
If you were pushing a stroller past that chain-link fence in 2024 wondering when it would come down, the honest answer was: nobody knew for sure. Interim Parks and Recreation Director Bryan Rachal was still hedging on the timeline as late as April 2025, telling the Camas Parks Commission the schedule was subject to change. Commission President Ellen Burton put the community's patience plainly at that same meeting: "I would really like to push for that," she said of holding the July opening date, adding that the city had made a commitment worth honoring.
The Pool Is Gone. The Splash Pad Is the Point.
Here is the part that a lot of people who moved to Camas in the last few years might not know: the outdoor pool that used to anchor Crown Park is not coming back. Built in 1954 through a donation from the Camas Lions Club, it ran for 63 years before Clark County Public Health ruled it noncompliant with state health rules. Rather than rebuild a pool that would need ongoing lifeguard staffing and recurring compliance costs, the city's 2018 Crown Park Master Plan called for an interactive splash pad instead, a self-serve water feature that requires none of that overhead.
That is a genuine trade, not a downgrade. A splash pad doesn't run on a swim-lesson schedule or require a lifeguard rotation, which means it can simply be on during daylight hours all summer without the staffing math that made the old pool expensive to keep open. For a family used to signing up for swim lesson slots, this is a different rhythm entirely: no sign-up sheet, no session times, just show up when it's hot.
A Playground Kids Picked, and a Court Adults Compromised On
The new inclusive playground carries a "TREEHOUSE" theme, and that wasn't a marketing decision. In September 2022, the project team partnered with the Camas School District and put the choice to nine elementary and middle school classes, who voted TREEHOUSE over a rival MOUNTAIN concept. It's a small detail, but it's the kind of thing that tells you the city was building this park for the kids who'd actually use it, not for a rendering.
The sport court has a quieter story behind it. A 2022 survey drew roughly 1,300 responses, with 51 percent of respondents asking for a shared multisport court. But by 2024, city leaders had dropped plans to add pickleball markings after neighbors near the park complained about the noise already coming from the existing pickleball-tennis courts on Crown Park's northwest corner. So the new court supports basketball and other multisport use, but not pickleball, a compromise shaped directly by the households who live closest to the park. If you've ever wondered why a park this well-funded doesn't have more pickleball capacity, that's the answer, and it's a useful reminder that proximity to a popular amenity cuts both ways.
What August Looks Like Around It
Crown Park isn't the only thing that changed. The Downtown Camas Association keeps a full calendar running through late summer, and this month it converges with the park's reopening to give residents more reasons to be outside after work than they've had in years.
| Date | What's Happening | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesdays through September | Camas Farmer's Market | Downtown Camas |
| Thursday, Aug. 13 | Downtown Camas Summer Nights Sips & Bites | Starts at the Fuel Medical Lobby, downtown Camas |
| Saturday, Aug. 22 | Camas Art & Wine Walk | Downtown Camas shops and galleries, including RedDoor Gallery |
The farmer's market has become the connective tissue for a lot of Wednesday evenings, close enough to Crown Park that families often treat the two as one stop rather than two. Sips & Bites, happening August 13, moves guests between downtown restaurants and bars for tastings, with this year's registration relocated to the Fuel Medical Lobby. The Art & Wine Walk on August 22 does something similar for the gallery scene, and RedDoor Gallery, a fine art space showcasing local painters and photographers in the historic district, tends to be one of the fuller stops on the route.
None of this is new to Camas. What's new is that it's happening in a summer where the park at the center of town is finally open again, which means the walk from the farmer's market to the splash pad, or from the wine walk to a pint at Grains of Wrath Brewery, a Camas-founded operation that's been pouring since 2017, is a lot more likely to happen on the same evening than it was a year ago.
The Fence Is Down
Two years is a long time for a neighborhood's default gathering spot to sit half-finished. Long enough that some families with young kids have never actually used Crown Park the way their older neighbors remember using it. This August is the first real test of whether the new version sticks, whether the splash pad becomes as automatic an after-dinner stop as the old pool used to be, whether the treehouse playground earns the kind of decade of scuffed-up affection its predecessor had.
Early signs suggest it's working. The park is full most evenings the weather cooperates, and the events calendar downtown isn't competing with Crown Park for foot traffic so much as feeding it. If you live within walking distance, you already know this. If you don't, it might be worth the drive some Wednesday around 6, before the farmer's market tents come down.
If Crown Park's second act has you thinking about which part of Camas would put you closest to it, or you're simply curious what a home near the splash pad and the wine walk route is worth these days, Joy Johnson knows this neighborhood block by block and is always glad to talk specifics.
