1000 Things To-Do

Welcome to our newest feature at OneThousandThingsToDo - Thursday’s What To Do This Weekend! We’ll be highlighting some great activities to do over the weekend in one city each Thursday morning, just in time for you to plan your activities. Today we are discussing some great things to do in Vancouver Washington, but don’t forget to come back each week or subscribe via email or our RSS feeds to keep up to date on new posts!

Spend the weekend discovering the rich history Vancouver, Washington has to offer. It all started in 1792 when Lt. William Broughton navigated 100 miles upriver from the mouth of the Columbia and named the area Point Vancouver, to commemorate having served under Capt. George Vancouver. In 1828 Dr. John McLaughlin renamed the area Fort Vancouver and moved the headquarters of the Hudson’s Bay Company here, making the location one of many firsts: The oldest non-native settlement in the Northwest.

The downtown area features several “things to do” for anyone interested in our history. You can make a day of it by parking and walking to many of the locations, or spend a few days to really enjoy some of the features available. My favorite experience at the fort was attending a Brigade Encampment some years ago. Everybody was dressed in authentic gear for a trip across the Rocky Mountain to the east coast in several covered wagons. I can’t even imagine doing it on today’s roads, let alone when you had to forge your own trail!

• Vancouver’s Oldest Apple Tree:he Old Apple Tree Park is located at 112 Columbia Way and is scheduled to host a festival the first week in October from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm after a two-year hiatus. It used to be that a trip to see the Old Apple Tree was, if not for it’s age, boring; at least for me. It was planted near the old Fort in 1826 when Hudson’s Bay Governor, Sir George Simpson, was given the seeds from an apple eaten at a farewell dinner and asked to plant them. The tree bore its first fruit, one apple, in 1830.
• Vancouver Officers Row–beautiful and historic: Do you like to get outdoors now, while the trees are turning green and the birds are learning to sing again? That’s the way I feel, too, and I found a great place for walking this weekend; along Officers Row in Old Town Vancouver. There are paved paths, mostly level, and all of them accessible to strollers or wheelchairs. There’s parking across the street.
• Fort Vancouver heritage garden–beautiful!: The garden at Fort Vancouver is a heritage garden, meaning that it contains plants that we would have seen here when the fort was in operation in 1845. Notice the arch over the entrance to the garden and the snowball bushes on either side of it. Snowball bushes are European, and would have been brought by ship from England—a journey that took the better part of a year.
• Clark County Historical Museum Vancouver: An important part of old town Vancouver’s history—you may have noticed that I like history—is the Clark County Historical Museum on Main street. This first photo was taken before the huge and beautiful old elm out front had to be removed due to terminal root-rot.
• Historical Fort Vancouver: Before we go to the fort itself, let’s stop in to the Visitor’s Center, up the hill from the fort on the corner of E Reserve and Evergreen Blvd. The visitor’s center is free, and there’s lots of information here about the history and archeology of the fort. There’s a gift shop, too, where we can buy replicas of items used at the fort, and items made by hand in the smithy or carpenter’s shop.
• Esther Short Park on a Saturday afternoon: Esther Short Park is 155 years old and over the decades has served as the town square, hosted a wading pool and skating rink and has come to be considered Vancouver’s centerpiece, its hub of community, culture and history. The park is host to the open air Vancouver Farmer’s Market on the weekends and is bordered by a variety of shops, cafes, and boutiques.

So don’t miss out on these activities and more to come! Don’t forget to comment if you like, we love to hear from our readers. If you have more ideas, just let us know!

Special thanks to MightyMouse, our Vancouver editor, for all these great ideas!