Camas Mill Photo Project – Chris Sharp-Manger Photo 5

Camas Mill Photo Project – Chris Sharp-Manger Photo 5

Year: 1922

Camas Mill Photo Project The Chris Sharp-Manger Photos This fifth photograph shows the Camas Mill under construction on September 30, 1922. By the end of September, the scale of the work has grown even more apparent. The view appears to be looking east, with downtown Camas visible beyond the large wall of the mill structure. The construction site fills the foreground, while the older town remains close behind it — not separate from the mill, but drawn directly into its expanding edge. In the upper-left corner, the six-sided church is visible, a building that no longer stands. It predated this construction by about ten years and was once part of the older downtown landscape. According to local lore, the church had no corners so there was no place for the devil to hide — one of those details that stays with a building long after the building itself is gone. The mill is unfinished, but already massive, with downtown Camas partly overshadowed by the industrial structure rising in front of it. This is Image 5 of 17 in the Chris Sharp-Manger Family Photos, a group of early Camas Mill images dating from 1922 to 1927. The set documents Camas, Washington mill construction, workers, downtown