Once, in another time and what seems like another place, Hazel Dell residents complained about lack of businesses.

In a 1952 survey, residents said they wanted a drug store, variety store and large department store. They thought trade could be drawn to their lightly traveled area from other areas where traffic congestion was creating problems.

Hazel Dell got its wish. Today, says Chief Brad Lothspeich of Fire District 6, there are about 600 businesses in his district, which takes in Hazel Dell, Salmon Creek, Felida and Lake Shore. The overwhelming bulk of the retail trade is on or just off Highway 99 through Hazel Dell and Salmon Creek.

Hazel Dell's destiny was to occupy a strategic point on the old road leading north from Vancouver through the woods to Salmon Creek and beyond. A map of the 1880s identifies the locality as Anderson, named for a pioneer family residing there.

Travelers stopped
The best-known member of this family was Sarah J. Anderson, whose name has been given to a local elementary school. The home of William and Sarah Anderson was a stopping place for travelers, and Sarah Anderson is said to have entertained the visitors with a violin. The site of their home was near what was to later become the Totem Pole restaurant, which opened in the late 1920s.

Farming provided a livelihood when the trees had been cleared. When prune-growing started in the late 1880s and the 90s, it gave farmers a cash crop that helped considerably in good harvest years.

Salmon Creek retained its own identity, two miles to the north, and Felida developed to the northwest.

Hazel Dell got some additional attention, of sorts, in the early years as the site of the county "poor farm." This was at the present Washington State University agricultural research station on the south side of what is now 78th Street (sometimes shown on old maps as Poor Farm Road), about a mile west of Highway 99).

Highway helps
Traffic increased about the time of World War I and the Pacific Highway was paved through Hazel Dell in the 1920s. The traffic volume continued to increase.

George Goodrich, who operated the Totem Pole restaurant from 1943 to 1960, said he had to close on Mondays and Tuesdays during World War II because "we couldn't get enough food to stay open longer."

"Anyone who had hamburgers and bottles of beer could do all the business they wanted," he said.

"Saturday night was the big night. The shipyard workers were out looking for food and entertainment. We saved our allotments of quarts of beer until Saturday night, so the shipyard people could live it up."

Hazel Dell was "still pretty rural at the time," Goodrich said, and no housing projects were constructed at Hazel Dell or Lake Shore during the war. Nevertheless, Vancouver's economic boom was felt sharply through the area.

Hazel Dell precinct had contained 181 dwelling units in 1940, and by 1947 the count was 494. Lake Shore precinct dwellings were up from 148 to 232 in the same period.

Improved economic times were reflected by the state's takeover of poor farm property in 1949 for an agricultural experiment station. Clark County retained some land fronting on Northeast 68th Street, where Hazel Dell Park was developed a short time later.

Water was an early requirement for the burgeoning community. The late Salmon Creek resident Harley Mays explained about the communities north of Vancouver: "Nearly all of the houses were located on small farms and had a very limited water supply."

Pipes installed
There was no town to establish a water system. But Clark County Public Utility District (now Clark Public Utilities) started providing water in 1951 with 347 customers. CPU still pipes the water to Hazel Dell, and now has a total of 18,000 customers in several parts of the county.

On the old road through Hazel Dell, now called Highway 99, all traffic had been traveling past the Hazel Dell businesses. Goodrich said the opening of the new freeway in the late-'50s worried the merchants. Some thought all the traffic would bypass the business district, that it was "the end of our careers."

Several service stations did quit, and there was a lull for several months, but business picked up again gradually.

Now, Goodrich observed, "it's almost as congested on Highway 99 as before, if not more so."

Businesses organize
The 99 Strip Association, now named the Hazel Dell/Salmon Creek Business Association, was organized to help boost the merchants' interests.

Some Hazel Dell identity disappeared in 1956 when the school district merged with Vancouver.

But the Totem Pole shopping center on the northeast corner of Highway 99 and 78th Street opened that year, a symbol of the community's growing commercial importance.

By this time, the Clark County planning staff had called the 99 Strip the busiest highway in the county. Planners said traffic circulation "is probably Hazel Dell's most immediate problem."

Some farms were being divided into subdivisions. And transition to commercial enterprises was accompanied frequently by what Mays, a longtime Clark County Planning Commission member, termed "zone-change skirmishes."

Hazel Dell Community Club led a successful drive in the late 1950s to establish Clark County Sewer District 1, serving the Hazel Dell area. Its growth in customers has been similar to the increase recorded by the water system.

A new Lake Shore Elementary School and the adjacent Lake Shore Swim Club, later named Lake Shore Athletic Club, were built in the mid-'50s.

Despite its shift to urban status, the area has balked at joining the city. Some Hazel Dell leaders favored annexation in the early '60s, but residents of Hazel Dell and Lake Shore defeated the proposal decisively in 1965.

The proposal, dormant for a long time, was resuscitated and was a live topic again this year. Neighboring Vancouver, pursuing a more aggressive annexation policy than in most past years, would score one of its biggest population gains yet if it could absorb the sprawling Hazel Dell/Salmon Creek area.