Clark County history: With a passion for planes, Wally Olson built Evergreen Airport in east Vancouver

Learning to fly for Wally Olson was a series of hops rather than a smooth takeoff. He flew first in 1933 but didn’t gain a pilot’s license until six years later. After flying in World War II, he went to California to teach discharged pilots stunt flying or aviating Douglas C-47 cargo planes.

But he wanted to own an airfield and a flying school. Failing to buy one in Chehalis, he came south to Vancouver in 1945. He and Elvin Puckett purchased acreage off Mill Plain, which was just an oiled road in those days, from attorney Roy Sugg. Clark County permitted a runway north of Mill Plain between present-day Southeast 139th Avenue and Southeast Hearthwood Boulevard.

Evergreen Airport’s original grass strip ran 2,000 feet long and 100 feet wide. By 1947, a large hangar appeared, and eventually, the field attracted working-class light aircraft pilots and nearly 100 airplanes. Through Evergreen Flying Service, Olson offered pilot training. His seven instructors turned out untold numbers of fledgling pilots. In the 1970s and 1980s, long-distance record holder Evelyn Waldren trained pilots for Olson.

The private airport became the workaday flyer’s paradise. It allowed the casual aviator a place to restore old planes and then fly them. Back in the day, Evergreen Airport visitors could hear aviation enthusiasts chatting, swapping stories and working on damaged airplanes, perfecting them for sale. About 1970, Olson installed a 2,220-foot paved runway parallel to the grass strip, adding runway lights and hangars with tie-down space. In 2001, the airport boasted 200,000 takeoffs and landings.

Each summer from 1964 through the 1990s, Olson’s field hosted the Northwest Antique Air Show sponsored by the Northwest Antique Airplane Club, which Olson helped found. The annual weekend event attracted flyers from all over the Pacific Northwest. The show avoided commercializing itself but did hold a big breakfast and sold lots of hotdogs. It offered 10 acres of free parking, and homeowners surrounding the airport made a few bucks by allowing overflow parking on their lawns.

Charles Lindbergh visited Evergreen Airport sometime during the mid-20th century. His visit became Olson’s cherished memory. According to Gordon Baxter in Flying Magazine, Lindbergh sat on a bench in Olson’s hangar. “He took a hop in my old Aeronca, paid for it, shook hands and left,” Olson told him.

The 1991 antique fly-in reunited Leah Hing with her lost NV974V airplane, which had been turned into kindling by Edward R. Murrow and his brother, Lacey, when they accidentally hit it in 1936 while trying to land at Seattle’s Boeing Field. Once, Evergreen held 90 aircraft, 70 in hangars, and promoted loitering. A sign on the door said so, at least until 2006, when the airport closed as east Vancouver rapidly developed. Today the old airport is home to a Hampton Inn.

Olson died of cancer in 1997, so he didn’t live to see the airport’s closure and subsequent sale. But the front of his Evergreen Flying Service hangar still stands at the Western Antique Aeroplane & Automobile Museum in Hood River, Ore., along with the bench Lindbergh sat upon.