- Mill Ditch Trail (cityofcamus.us)
Approximately 2.6 miles from NW Drake to Round Lake. Trail is accessible from many of the main streets such as NE Dallas and NE Garfield. Unpaved. Mostly Flat. Travels alongside the Mill water ditch previously owned and used by Georgia Pacific, and is now owned by the City of Camas. The ditch was hand dug by 125 Chinese laborers in about five months time in 1884.
- Mill Ditch to Round Lake Hike (OregonHikers.org)
The Georgia-Pacific Paper Mill, with its broad columns of steam slowly billowing skyward, is the dominant feature of the small city of Camas. The town’s industrial history goes back a long way - to the first sawmills of the 1850s. In 1884, Henry Pittock’s LaCamas Colony Company used Chinese laborers to construct a 7,000-foot ditch that would carry water from Round Lake to its new mill on the site of the current Georgia-Pacific operation. This aqueduct is still in operation and serving its original purpose; indeed, hikers have to chance to walk much of the ditch as well as connect to its source at Mill Pond in Lacamas Park, where they can also make use of a much wider network of trails.