Cremation Services

There is no hospital in Camas. PeaceHealth runs two clinics here, but a Camas resident who dies in the hospital almost always dies somewhere else, most often at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center, 400 NE Mother Joseph Place in Vancouver. Legacy Salmon Creek in north Vancouver is the other Washington option.

Where hospice is involved, families here are usually with PeaceHealth Ray Hickey Hospice House at 2112 E Mill Plain Boulevard, with PeaceHealth Southwest Hospice at home, or with Eden Hospice of Clark County, which names Camas in its service area.

We collect from all of these, and from private homes and care facilities, at any hour of the day or night. If your person is on hospice service, their nurse can call us directly.

Yes, and it is worth understanding before you are asked about it. A death is registered in the state where it occurs, not where the person lived. Because Camas sits directly across the river from Oregon, and because Legacy Mount Hood in Gresham is a realistic destination for a Camas family, this comes up here more than in most places.

If your person died in Oregon, the certificate is filed with Oregon at $25 a copy rather than with Clark County at $38.50 for the first copy. Different agency, different form, different timeline. We handle the filing either way, and we will tell you which side of the river you are dealing with before you have to ask.

Two things, and the first is the one people are never told. A Washington death certificate can be ordered from any local health department in the state, not only from Clark County. Clark County’s counter is the closest to Camas, so most families use it, but if you are working from elsewhere in Washington you do not have to come back here for it.

Clark County Public Health, Vital Records is at 1601 E Fourth Plain Boulevard, Building 17, Suite A327, Vancouver, WA 98661. The number is 564-397-8092.

The first certified copy is $38.50. Additional copies are $25.00 each, and there is a $10.00 order fee per transaction, so five copies in one order comes to $148.50. Requests made in person usually take twenty to thirty minutes. Mail and online orders ship within three business days. Note that the counter is closed on Tuesdays for in-person service, which catches people out.

Washington limits who may receive a death record to spouses and domestic partners, children, siblings, parents, grandparents and legal representatives. We order certificates for the families we serve at $30 each, which saves you both the trip and the order fee.

None of that helps if the death happened across the river. An Oregon death is an Oregon record, and no Washington health department can issue it, however close it is. That is worth reading alongside the question above about dying in Oregon, because in Camas the two come up together more often than anywhere else we serve.

Both papers covering Camas will publish a death notice at no charge, which is worth knowing before you agree to pay for one.

The Camas-Washougal Post-Record, published here in town, offers a free short mention in print alongside an online notice. Reach them at obits@camaspostrecord.com or 360-834-2141. The Columbian in Vancouver runs a free death notice through its own submission form.

Both also offer paid obituaries with photographs and a full written tribute. Neither publishes a rate card, so you will need to call for a figure. A complete obituary on this site, with photographs, is included in our price at no charge.

Washington does have a statute on this, RCW 68.50.130, and it is more permissive than the wording first suggests. After cremation, ashes may be scattered on private property with the owner’s consent, and on public land or water with the approval of the agency that controls it. Keeping ashes at home, dividing them among family members, or burying them is not restricted at all.

Locally, Camas Cemetery at 630 NE Oak Street is operated by the city and has both niches and a section for cremated remains. The office number is 360-834-4220. Fern Prairie Cemetery on NE Robinson Road and Washougal Memorial Cemetery on Q Street are the other nearby grounds, and Evergreen Memorial Gardens in Vancouver is about ten miles west.

Lacamas Lake, Round Lake and the Columbia itself are all common choices for scattering. Scattering at sea is available through us for $195.

More money is left unclaimed here than in almost any other part of settling a death, usually because nobody tells the family it exists. These are the sources worth checking, in the order most likely to apply.

Social Security pays a one-time $255 lump-sum death payment to a surviving spouse, or failing that to a child who is 17 or younger, 18 or 19 and still in school, or disabled before 21. It is not automatic. You have two years from the death to claim it and after that it is gone. Call 1-800-772-1213, weekdays 8:00 to 7:00, and say “I want to apply for a lump-sum death payment.” Some people can now start the claim through a my Social Security account. If you would rather go in person, note that Social Security now requires an appointment, and the current list of offices is at ssa.gov/locator. We do not print office addresses here because they change and a wasted trip is the last thing you need.

If the person was a veteran, start here before anything else. This is the correction we most want to make, because we had it wrong ourselves and so does nearly every funeral home page in the county. The nearest VA national cemetery to Camas is not Willamette. It is Vancouver Barracks National Cemetery, at 1455 East Fourth Plain Boulevard in Vancouver, which came under the National Cemetery Administration in 2020. It is roughly ten miles away rather than twenty, open daily from sunrise to sunset, and it accepts cremated remains only, which for the families we serve is exactly right. It is administered from Willamette at 503-273-5250. Willamette National Cemetery, 11800 SE Mount Scott Boulevard in Portland, remains the choice for a casketed burial.

The VA’s own wording is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing. Burial benefits include “a gravesite in any of our national cemeteries with available space, opening and closing of the grave, perpetual care, a Government headstone or marker, a burial flag, and a Presidential Memorial Certificate, at no cost to the family.” The VA adds that cremated remains are inurned “in the same manner and with the same honors as casketed remains.” A spouse or dependent child is interred at no cost too, though their name is inscribed on the veteran’s headstone rather than given a separate marker. A surviving spouse who remarried after the veteran’s death remains eligible, which is the point people most often get wrong. To arrange an interment at need, the National Cemetery Scheduling Office is 1-800-535-1117, with discharge papers faxed to 1-866-900-6417. That is faster than calling the cemetery.

Separately, for a death not connected to service, the VA pays a $1,002 burial allowance and a $1,002 plot allowance as of October 1, 2025, claimed on VA Form 21P-530EZ within two years of the burial. One catch that costs families money: the plot allowance is not payable if the interment is in a national cemetery, because there is no plot cost to reimburse. You get the niche free, or you get the plot allowance. Not both. The VA benefits line is 1-800-827-1000.

The Clark County Veterans Assistance Fund pays up to $2,000 toward a burial or cremation. It is administered by the Clark County Veterans Assistance Center. You will need a DD-214 showing an honorable or general discharge, twelve consecutive months of Washington residency, current Clark County residency, and household income within 200 percent of the federal poverty guideline. The number is (360) 693-7030, or 564-397-8478 direct to the fund, and the email is vetfund@ccvac.net. They are at 907 Harney Street, Suite 200, Vancouver, weekdays 9:00 to 4:00. Note that address: they moved in 2025 and a good many listings, including the county’s own, still show the old Columbia Street office.

The Cowlitz Indian Tribe is the federally recognized tribe with a presence here, and it publishes a real benefit: up to $4,000 toward a funeral for an enrolled member or their spouse, administered by the Enrollment Department. Call (360) 577-8140 and press 3, or write to enrollment@cowlitz.org. There is a Vancouver office at 7700 NE 26th Avenue at 360-397-8228. The Bureau of Indian Affairs also runs burial assistance of up to $3,500 for indigent enrolled members. One thing we would rather state accurately: the Chinook Indian Nation is not federally recognized, so federal tribal benefits do not run through it, whatever you may read elsewhere.

If the death was a homicide, Washington pays funeral costs. Almost nobody in this industry tells families this. The Crime Victims Compensation Program at Labor and Industries pays up to $7,990 toward funeral and burial expenses, plus up to twelve grief counseling sessions for immediate family. The crime must have been reported to police, and the application must reach the program within three years of that report. Call 1-800-762-3716.

If there is genuinely no money, Washington law obliges the county to act. Under RCW 36.39.030 the county must arrange disposition for a person who dies indigent and whose body is unclaimed by relatives or a church. In Clark County the Medical Examiner’s Office carries that out and cremates at county expense; in 2023 it did so for 26 of the 4,557 people who died here. Be clear about what this is, because it is often misdescribed: there is no application form and no published income threshold, and it applies to the unclaimed. If the circumstances might fit, call 564.397.8405, at 1300 West Franklin Street, Suite 191, Vancouver.

If none of this fits, tell us anyway. We would rather spend ten minutes working out what you qualify for than have you borrow money you did not need to borrow.