Roots Closed After 23 Years. The Rest of Downtown Camas Didn't Blink.

Walk past 19215 SE 34th Street this week and the windows at Roots Restaurant and Bar are dark for the first time since 2003. No sign in the door, just an empty dining room where chef-owner Brad Root spent 23 years plating Dungeness crab and Northwest steaks for anniversary dinners and Sunday brunches. The restaurant shut its doors on September 1, and if you'd walked the same three blocks a week later, you'd have found the Camas Farmers Market running full tilt on a side street it's never used before, and a car show setting up downtown on a date that has nothing to do with its usual summer weekend.

That's the real story this month. One of the businesses that helped define what "going out" meant in Camas just ended, permanently, because a single person decided to stop. The things that didn't end, the market, the car show, the gallery events, kept running through construction, rain delays, and a compressed footprint because they don't depend on one kitchen or one owner's stamina. If you live here, that distinction matters more than either headline on its own.

The table that opened with the comeback

Roots wasn't just another restaurant closing. It was one of Clark County's first modern fine-dining rooms, opened in the Riverstone Marketplace back when Camas was still climbing out of a rough stretch downtown. Brad Root came up working Portland kitchens under chefs like Greg Higgins and Cory Schreiber before he put his own name on a menu, and for two decades that menu of caramelized scallops and thyme-rubbed chicken gave Camas a reason to say it had a real chef's counter rather than just a good burger place.

The closure note posted to Roots' social media said Root had decided to retire after 45 years in the industry, 23 of them spent owning this one restaurant. It closed with the kind of understatement you'd expect from someone stepping away on his own terms, saying he was looking forward to this next chapter.

This isn't an isolated data point. Acorn & the Oak, the flower-filled supper club near Lacamas Lake that opened in early 2020 weeks before COVID shut everything down, closed in September 2024 when its owners decided they wanted more time with their toddler. Two of Camas' most personal, chef-driven restaurants have now closed within two years of each other, both times because the person behind the stove chose to stop rather than because the neighborhood stopped showing up. That's worth knowing if you've been assuming Camas' dining scene only moves in one direction.

Two blocks over, the market changed its whole shape

While Roots was serving its last dinners, the Camas Farmers Market was finishing its 19th season in a location it has never used before. Construction of the city's new fire station near City Hall pushed the market off the library lawn, its home for close to two decades, and onto Birch Street between Third and Fourth avenues. For vendors and shop owners on that stretch, it's been an adjustment.

Lori Cano, who owns Poppy and Hawk at 223 NE Fourth Ave, told the Camas Post-Record that her end of the block had always felt overlooked, saying this end of the street has always been kind of the forgotten block. Steve Inzalaco of Shady Grove Farms said the tighter footprint means he can no longer keep his cooler trailer next to his booth, forcing him to rethink how he manages inventory through a warm afternoon. Andy Regan of Camas Cheese Co. called the shift positive for his business overall.

The market runs Wednesdays from 3 to 7 p.m. through September 30, which means there are only a few Wednesdays left before the season closes for the year. If you haven't walked the new setup yet, this month is the window.

The car show everyone missed is happening now

Camas' 19th annual Car Show usually runs the last weekend of June. This year it got rained out. The rescheduled date is September 12, 2 to 7 p.m., in the same stretch of historic downtown streets it always fills with classic and custom cars. C-TRAN is running a free shuttle from Camas High School to the Camas Library for anyone who'd rather not hunt for parking downtown.

It's a small thing, but it's a useful reminder that even the town's biggest single-day event isn't fragile. A rainout in June didn't cancel it, it just moved the date. That's a different kind of resilience than what a restaurant with one chef and one lease can offer.

Here's what else is on the calendar before the season turns:

What this month is actually telling you about Camas

Put the two threads side by side and a pattern shows up that a single news item wouldn't reveal. The businesses tied to one person's daily labor, a chef running a dining room for two decades, a couple running a supper club with a toddler at home, are the ones ending. The institutions that belong to the whole town, a farmers market run by a nonprofit board, a car show sponsored by local merchants, a gallery hosting a plein air event, keep going even when construction displaces them or weather rains them out. The Downtown Camas Association itself went through its own version of this recently, promoting its longtime events manager into the executive director role this summer rather than losing continuity to a search. The people change. The rituals don't.

If you're a longtime Camas resident, that's the thing worth carrying into fall. The closure of Roots is a genuine loss, especially if it was your place for anniversaries or a slow Sunday brunch. But it doesn't say anything about whether downtown itself is thinning out. The market's temporary Birch Street season, the rescheduled car show, and the calendar of small gallery and lodge events happening this month all point the other way. Camas isn't losing its downtown. It's just losing the version of it that depended on one person staying at the stove for 23 years, and gaining a clearer sense of which parts of this place are actually built to last.

If watching a market get pushed onto a new block or a restaurant close after two decades has you thinking about what your own corner of Camas is worth these days, that's a conversation worth having before the season turns. Jacob Sanchez has spent years working these streets and can walk you through what's actually happening with home values in Camas right now. Get your instant home valuation and see where you stand.