A shooting range in the attic, with two companies of soldiers bunked directly below. Circle the restored double barracks from the years this post outgrew itself, now one of the West Barracks event venues.
You are standing beside the Artillery Barracks, a long Colonial Revival building raised in nineteen oh four, when Vancouver Barracks was headquarters of the Department of the Columbia and the post population nearly tripled. Soldiers were sleeping in tents. This was a double barracks. Two full companies, two hundred forty men, under one roof. The ground floor held the mess and the social hall, where the meals, the card games, and the letters home happened. Upstairs were the dormitories, bunk after bunk in open rows. And above all of it, tucked into the attic, an indoor rifle range, so on a wet Northwest winter day, target practice cracked away right over the soldiers' bunks. The building was restored in the city's West Barracks renovation, and today it hosts weddings and events. The grounds are open, so walk around it, look up at those attic windows, and imagine the noise.