Marys River - Name

Name

The origin of the name is uncertain, although it was used as early as 1846. Lewis A. and Lewis L. McArthur, in the seventh edition of Oregon Geographic Names find no support for the suggestion that employees of the Hudson's Bay Company had earlier named the stream St. Marys River. Rather, they summarize two stories about the origin. One is that Adam E. Wimple, an early settler, named the stream for his sister. Wimple was hanged at Dallas, Oregon, in 1852 for murdering his wife, also named Mary. The other story is that Wayman St. Clair, who represented Benton County in the territorial legislature in the early 1850s, named the river for Mary Lloyd. She was said to have been the first white woman to cross the river.

In 1847, Joseph C. Avery began laying out a town at the confluence of Marys River with the Willamette River, and the place was called Marysville. In 1853, the legislature changed the name of the town to Corvallis, a compounding of Latin words meaning heart of the valley. Prior to settlement by European Americans, fur traders referred to the Mary's River as Mouse River or Mice River. It is probable that nearby Marys Peak was named for the river.