Trying to reach home on McLoughlin Heights during World War II could be tough. The temporary housing units were similar, and distinguishing landmarks in the huge project on the hill a couple of mile east of downtown Vancouver were scarce.

School children frequently had trouble determining where they should get off the bus. The small wood-frame houses were muted colors, and the color sometimes was mentioned in trying to give directions.

An example of directions to one house, as noted by a wartime resident: "I live in the gangrene-painted house on the second left-hand turn after you make two right-hand turns when you leave the main stem from the store."

Constructed on the Heights during the war, it was one of the largest public housing projects in the United States. Within about a year and a half, beginning four months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, some 6,000 homes were built and 25,000 people had moved in. Many worked here building ships for the war effort.

Then, within a few years of the war's conclusion in 1945, practically all the project had been removed and new neighborhoods were developed. This second housing effort also featured single-family residences but emphasized permanency.

The Heights' story extends back considerably further than the war, although the area was sparsely populated.

One of the first roads in the area, dating back to the Hudson's bay Co. fur-trading times in the first half of the last century, extended through the area to Mill Plain, in the midst of a forest, a short distance east of where the war project was later built.

People and ships
By the time World War II started, the county's once-huge prune industry had been in decline for more than a decade.

The economy really turned around with the arrival of a Kaiser shipyard on the Columbia River just south of the Heights.

Workers swarmed in, and the Kaiser Co. and federal government began considering sites for housing projects.

Eventually, six projects were constructed in the Vancouver area, to house 45,000 people. Residential units on the Heights 6,000-plus accommodated more than half of those, who had come from all over the country.

A community center and one of the country's earliest suburban shopping centers were among features of the Heights. The Boulevard Shopping Center drew patrons a little south of the present Town Plaza.

Trees were scarce, but lawns and numerous "victory gardens" added greenery to the project.

Many families left Vancouver near the end of the war of shortly thereafter, and the population in the housing projects declined rapidly.

The government began removing most of the units; the only housing considered permanent in the giant Heights project was on Harney Hill.

Some residents of Vanport in North Portland near present-day Delta Park, were allowed into the remaining units, temporarily, in 1948 after their town was destroyed by Columbia River flood waters.

Area annexed
Two years late, the city of Vancouver gave official recognition to the Heights' status change from country to city by annexing the area.

McLoughlin Heights had only 3,700 temporary units remaining at the start of 1951, down from about 6,000, and was renting at the time only to veterans and armed forces personnel.

In 1952, the Vancouver Housing Authority (VHA) bought the project from the U.S. government. Starting in late 1956, no more new tenants were accepted for McLoughlin Heights.

The last family moved out of temporary housing in October 1958.

In the continuing transition, the VHA removed most of the old houses, laid out new streets and platted the area for new privately owned houses.

VHA also had been selling many parcels of land to private developers, who found ready customers for homes among the increasing population of the Vancouver area.

In the early 1960s the VHA planned and constructed a 150-unit complex (Skyline Crest) on the Heights just west of Andresen Road and south of the present Safeway store. The VHA still maintains its headquarters there, at 500 Omaha Way.