On August 28, a crowd spread blankets across Dorothy Fox Park as dusk settled in and Coco lit up the screen. It was the last stop in a summer series that, on paper, looks like the same thing Camas has done for years: free movies, a couple hundred lawn chairs, popcorn for sale, kids running the grass before the film starts. Nothing about that night looked new.
What was new is where the series had already been. A week earlier, the same program set up at the Camas-Washougal Port for Free Willy. The week before that, Hamilton played at Crown Park. And the series opened, back on August 7, clear across town at Louis Bloch Park with A League of Their Own. Four Fridays, four different parks. That is not how Movies in the Park has worked in recent memory, and the reason traces back to one address on NE 17th Avenue.
One Park, Every Friday, Every Year
In 2025, Camas Parks and Recreation ran its entire Movies in the Park series at a single site: Dorothy Fox Elementary, on NW Sierra Street, all four Fridays in August. Same field, same screen setup, same walk from the parking lot every week. It made sense. Dorothy Fox had the space, the sightlines, and no construction fencing in the way.
Crown Park did have construction fencing in the way. The city's crown jewel park, a 7.3-acre gathering spot donated to Camas back in 1934 by the Crown Willamette Paper Company, had been mid-renovation, its old outdoor pool removed years earlier after Clark County Public Health flagged it as noncompliant and past its useful life. For a while, Crown Park wasn't in the rotation for anything. It was a construction zone with mature fir trees around the edges.
That changed on July 2, when the city reopened it with a full day built for the occasion. Camas Parks and Recreation started the morning with a free community workout, moved into a land acknowledgment and blessing from Cowlitz Tribe representatives, then filled the afternoon with a bike rodeo, a twelve-station history and nature trivia trail, and a ribbon cutting with coffee from Kaffae. The new splash pad opened for the first time. So did an inclusive playground with a treehouse theme, picked by Camas School District elementary and middle schoolers who voted on the design themselves. A WWII memorial that Georgia-Pacific donated back in 2020, honoring former mill employees who served, finally got installed near the park's entrance. As the sun went down, Cowlitz Dancers performed and the city's Concerts in the Park series kicked off its season right there on the same lawn.
The city's own materials called it "a true crown jewel of the Camas community," which is the kind of line a parks department writes for every ribbon cutting. This time it happened to be accurate. Crown Park came back online with more capacity and more reasons to program around it than it had in years, and the Movies in the Park schedule shows exactly what the city did with that.
The 2026 Schedule, Park by Park
| Date | Park | Film |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 7 | Louis Bloch Park | A League of Their Own (PG) |
| Aug 14 | Crown Park | Hamilton (PG-13) |
| Aug 21 | Camas-Washougal Port | Free Willy (PG) |
| Aug 28 | Dorothy Fox Park | Coco (PG) |
Read across that table and the logic becomes obvious. Crown Park didn't just get a slot back on the calendar. It got the second week, right after the season opener, as if the department wanted its newest amenity seen while the paint was still fresh. Then the series kept moving outward, from a park most residents already know to a riverfront site at the Port that has a completely different feel, all the way to Dorothy Fox on the last Friday of the month. A resident who caught even two of these four nights this year saw more of Camas than a resident who went to all four Dorothy Fox screenings in 2025 combined.
Downtown Didn't Go Anywhere
None of this means downtown lost its pull. The Farmer's Market still runs Wednesdays from 3 to 7 p.m. through September 29, and First Fridays keep going with the Downtown Camas Association's themed evenings from 5 to 8 p.m. September's edition, on the 4th, is built around "Celebrate Art," with shows and receptions at four Camas galleries plus a self-guided mural tour along Birch Street. The Camas Vintage and Art Street Faire ran its usual late-August date on the 29th, bringing antiques and vintage vendors back to the same downtown blocks that have hosted it for years.
What's changed is that downtown is no longer the only place asking for a Friday night. A Beer at a Time, on NE 3rd Avenue, keeps its weekend live music going into fall the way it always has, and Lane Cellars and English Estate Winery still book their own evenings on the calendar. That part of Camas's rhythm hasn't moved an inch. It's just no longer the entire rhythm. Crown Park now has enough going on, between the splash pad, the playground, and the Concerts in the Park series it launched, to hold its own crowd on a night when downtown is also full.
What Fall Actually Looks Like
The next few weeks show the same pattern the summer set up: some fall programming stays anchored downtown, and some of it is now happening at the parks that got reopened or upgraded this year.
- September 4: First Friday, "Celebrate Art," downtown galleries and Birch Street
- Through September 29: Farmer's Market, Wednesdays, downtown
- September 18: Cookie Decorating at Lacamas Lake Lodge
- October 17: Zombie Dash, Camas Parks and Recreation
- December 4: Hometown Holidays, First Friday, downtown, tree lighting and Santa photos
Notice where Lacamas Lake Lodge shows up on that list. It's a Parks and Recreation facility, not a downtown storefront, and it's hosting a family event that used to be the kind of thing you'd expect at a community center or a church hall. That's consistent with everything Crown Park's reopening set in motion this year. The city's parks aren't just where residents go to burn off energy between errands anymore. They're where a real share of the fall calendar now lives.
The Practical Version
If you've lived in Camas long enough to remember when Movies in the Park meant one field, all August, no exceptions, this year's version is worth noticing for what it says about where the city is investing its attention. Crown Park didn't reopen quietly. It reopened with enough infrastructure and enough symbolism, the WWII memorial, the Cowlitz Tribe blessing, the student-chosen playground theme, that the rest of the parks calendar rearranged itself to make room for it. Fall won't undo that. The Farmer's Market and First Fridays will keep downtown Camas doing what it does best, but the next few months of Cookie Decorating, Concerts in the Park follow-ups, and whatever Zombie Dash turns into this year will keep pulling residents toward Crown Park and Lacamas Lake Lodge in a way that simply wasn't happening a year ago.
Karen Higgins has spent more than 30 years watching Clark County neighborhoods change in exactly this kind of quiet, cumulative way, a park reopens, a series moves, and suddenly a whole town's weekend habits look different. If you're curious what else is shifting in Camas or any of the other Clark County communities she covers, Karen Higgins is always glad to talk through what's changing on the ground, no pressure and no sales pitch required.
