I am 90 years old and can tell many stories of Vancouver Lake.
Neighbor kids and I would swim the lake early in the spring of the year. The water would flood because there were no dams on the Columbia River then. We swam nude.
My dad would take us fishing for catfish, bass, sunfish and crappies. Vancouver Lake was five miles from my home, and I would fish after school most every day. The lake froze over some winters and we could walk on the ice.
There was a boat moorage on the lake at that time, owned by the Shovilles. I kept a boat at the Felida Moorage and went to the lake by way of Lake River, past Soldier Lake and Cat Island.
Many years I hunted ducks on the north end of the lake. I always limited out on mallards. The moorage master at Felida always said I was the only hunter that brought any ducks from a day’s hunt on Vancouver Lake.
You had to be cautious and watch the weather. Winds could come up and swamp your boat. Some hunters capsized their boats and lost outboard guns and almost their lives.
In the 1960s, it was reported that a person named Horace Daniels had found on the shoreline of the lake a buried hardwood prow of a Viking-type boat. Never heard any more about that.
Vancouver Lake flooded every spring. From our home, we had a beautiful view of the flooding and prune trees in bloom. It was like looking at a field of snow.
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