Columbia Land Trust transfers 13-acre Lacamas Heritage Trail property to the City of Camas
For the entirety of Columbia Land Trust’s more than 35-year history, the organization has worked closely with local governments to conserve nature close to home and improve access to nearby outdoor spaces. In the City of Camas, if you’ve ever walked the bustling Lacamas Heritage Trail or paddled at Fallen Leaf Lake you’ve enjoyed a park that Columbia Land Trust helped create!
As part of this longstanding tradition of partnership, in June the Land Trust transferred a 13.5-acre parcel along the Lacamas Heritage Trail to the City of Camas, as the final step in the property’s conservation journey. The land buffers the beloved trail for nearly a half mile and provides the public with direct access to Lacamas Lake. The Land Trust acquired the parcel in 1999 under a formal agreement with the City of Camas stating that the Land Trust would hold the property on behalf of the city, and support with monitoring, until the city was ready to take ownership. For the next 27 years, Land Trust stewardship staff managed the property in cooperation with the city and Clark County to preserve its public access and natural values. The parcel has already been functioning as part of the popular Lacamas Heritage Trail corridor and now will continue to be maintained for open space, conservation, and recreation.
The Lacamas Heritage Trail is a wide gravel trail, about 3.5 miles long in one direction (seven miles round trip). It runs from Goodwin Drive near Camas Meadows Golf Club to Lacamas Lake along the south and west side of the lake, offering scenic nature views and multiple points of water access. South of the trail sits Fallen Leaf Lake which Columbia Land Trust helped conserve and transferred to the City of Camas in 2025. The trail is also adjacent to 250-acre Camp Currie, which was one of Columbia Land Trust’s earliest conservation projects.
The Lacamas Heritage Trail property was originally donated to the Land Trust for conservation by the late Tom Shipler, as part of his vision for a public trail along Lacamas Creek and the south shore of Lacamas Lake. Why did the Land Trust hold it for so long, you might be wondering? Existing conserved lands can often be used to leverage funding for new parks and open space. In this case, the City of Camas strategically deferred taking on ownership to maximize opportunities to obtain grant funding for other conservation projects.
Founded in Clark County in 1990, Columbia Land Trust serves a diverse region that stretches from east of the Cascade Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, in both Oregon and Washington. To date the Land Trust has conserved about 1,800 acres in Clark County, including portions of beloved Clark County regional parks like Whipple Creek, Daybreak, and Lewisville. Fostering access to nature is a core part of our conservation mission, and projects like these in rapidly developing areas like Clark County work in tandem with our landscape-scale conservation work taking place in more remote areas of the Columbia River region.
