Clark County history: The many names of Hayden Island

Hayden Island has borne several names. For four decades, it was best known for the Jantzen Beach amusement park. Today, a spread-out shopping center and residential neighborhood inhabit the same sandy shore.

The first European to set foot on the island was an officer under British Naval Capt. George Vancouver during his expedition. In October 1792, Lt. William Broughton named the sliver of land after the ship’s naturalist and medical officer, Archibald Menzies. Menzies Island it remained, at least on English maps.

Eleven years later, President Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase removed French claims to the Pacific Northwest — but not British, Russian and Spanish claims. The president sent explorers in part to legitimize America’s entitlement and expected the Corps of Discovery to demonstrate it. Using Lt. Broughton’s map for navigation, yet somehow ignorant of its British name, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark mapped the island’s 1,400 acres in their journal in the fall of 1805. Having seen the numerous colorfully painted canoes of the Multnomah people there, they couldn’t resist relabeling it Canoe Island.

The British moved in, anticipating Fort Vancouver would help bolster their claim. The Hudson’s Bay Company renamed the island after Capt. Vancouver, confusing mapmakers with two Vancouver Islands while completely ignoring its Menzies eponym. Gratefully, they didn’t name their new British Columbia fort after the sea captain, but instead for Queen Victoria.

For a while, settlers dubbed the sandy isle Shaw’s Island after a property owner there, Col. W. Shaw. Once the 49th parallel boundary between Canada and the western United States was fixed by the Oregon Treaty in 1846, the Oregon Territory was U.S. property and naming the place shifted back to the Americans. They, too, named it after a landowner on the island — Gay Hayden — and it has remained so to date, to the joy of mapmakers.

After learning of the Donation Land Claim Act, Hayden struck a claim on the island. He would eventually buy large swaths of Vancouver, including properties owned by Esther Short. He and his wife, Mary Jane Hayden, lived on the island for five years, eventually building a large house there. In 1886, the pair separated and split their island real estate, managing their divided fortune individually.

Getting to Hayden Island meant a water trip until 1917, when the Interstate Bridge opened. Until then, folks canoed or took the ferry that landed on the island. When the Interstate Bridge opened, streetcar tracks ran down the middle, allowing passenger travel from Vancouver to Portland. A stop at Hayden Island opened it to recreational use.

The Columbia Beach amusement park on Tomahawk Island ran from 1908 to 1926. In a successful effort to sell more swimsuits, Jantzen Knitting Mills opened Hayden Island Jantzen Beach amusement park in 1928. The park featured swimming pools, one Olympic-sized.

In 1930, Lotus Isle amusement park opened on Tomahawk Island, competing with the Jantzen Park before closing after two years. Today, the two islands are joined. In 1960, construction crews used the rubble from the Interstate Bridge addition to connect the two islands.