Vader is a small city in Lewis County, Washington, set on Olequa Creek in the farm and timber country north of the Columbia River. It sits in the broad valley corridor between the Cowlitz River and Interstate 5, roughly midway between the larger towns of Winlock and Castle Rock, and about an hour's drive north of Portland and Vancouver. Its setting among hay fields, pastures, and timberland gives the community a distinctly rural character. The town's story is written in its changing names. Platted in the 1870s as Kraft, after an early postmaster, the settlement incorporated on January 12, 1906, as Little Falls, a reference to the cascades on Olequa Creek. The Northern Pacific Railway, whose tracks defined the town, renamed its station Sopenah to avoid confusion with Little Falls, Minnesota, and the community later adopted the name Vader. Through each era the economy stayed rooted in farming, logging, and the railroad. Vader has held onto pieces of that past. The Ben Olsen House and the Grace Evangelical Church of Vader are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the community has worked to preserve its small-town identity. An annual May Day Festival, first held in the 1950s, remains a fixture of local life, drawing residents together each spring. With a population of only a few hundred, Vader offers a quiet, low-cost alternative to the region's larger towns. Services are limited, so residents look to Winlock, Castle Rock, and Chehalis for groceries, schools, and medical care, while the nearby Interstate 5 corridor provides a direct route to employment centers in Centralia, Longview, and the Portland-Vancouver metro area.