The best Christmas light displays in Clark County
Every year around the first week of December, someone in a Vancouver Facebook group asks where to take the kids to see Christmas lights, and every year the same handful of answers surface. This is that list, kept in one place.
A note on timing: dates and hours for the upcoming season are typically announced in November. The displays below run most years, but confirm current-season details with the organizers before you drive out. We refresh this page each November once schedules are published.
Christmas on Franklin — Vancouver
The closest thing Clark County has to Portland’s Peacock Lane, and it has grown well past a single house.
Centered on 4616 N.W. Franklin St. in Vancouver, the display spans roughly ten neighboring properties working together, with somewhere north of 200,000 lights between them. Recent seasons have included dozens of holiday figures, animated trees around 25 feet tall, and multiple nativity scenes.
It works both on foot and from the car. Walking is better — the detail does not read at driving speed, and the scale of the animated pieces lands differently when you are standing under them. In past seasons it has run nightly, roughly 5 to 10 p.m., through the end of December.
Worth knowing: this is a residential street. Park considerately, keep driveways clear, and keep the noise down after about nine. The whole thing continues year to year because the neighbors want it to.
Winter Wonderland at Portland International Raceway
About three miles south of Vancouver, across the river, and the biggest production in the region by a distance — it bills itself as the largest holiday light show west of the Mississippi and has been running since 1993.
It is a drive-through show, roughly two miles of route with 250-plus light set pieces, many of them fully animated. You stay in your car the whole time, which if you have small children or it is genuinely pouring is the entire point.
This one is ticketed, and it is the one place on this list where timing changes your evening substantially. Weekend nights in mid-December back up badly. A weeknight, early in the run, is a completely different experience.
Brew Lights in the Park — Ridgefield
The grown-ups’ entry. Held at Overlook Park in Ridgefield, hosted by The Neighborhood Refuge, combining lights with craft beer, spirits, and live music — typically a single evening event in December rather than a season-long run.
If your holiday lights outing does not need to be child-friendly, this is the one to watch the calendar for. Because it is usually one night only, it is also the easiest to miss.
How to actually plan the evening
Go on a weeknight. The difference between a Tuesday and a Saturday in December is the difference between a pleasant hour and ninety minutes of brake lights.
Go before the second week of December. Most displays are fully up by the first weekend. Crowds do not peak until the third week. That gap is the sweet spot.
Combine the walk-throughs, separate the drive-throughs. Neighborhood displays are close enough to string two or three together in an evening. The raceway is its own trip.
Bring a thermos. Obvious, routinely forgotten. Standing still in a Vancouver December is colder than the number on the thermometer suggests.
Check before you drive. Weather cancellations happen, single-night events move, and a display that ran for a decade occasionally takes a year off.
Know one we missed?
Clark County has a lot of homeowners doing remarkable work on their own streets, and the good ones spread by word of mouth rather than press release. If there is a display or neighborhood that belongs on this list, tell us about it and we will take a look this season.
We install Christmas lights around Vancouver and Clark County the rest of the year, so we spend a lot of December looking at rooflines. If you want your own house on somebody else’s list, here is what that costs.