Gervais: Named for a Fur-Trade Pioneer
Near Salem, Oregon
The town of Gervais carries the name of Joseph Gervais, one of the very first non-Native settlers to put down permanent roots in the Willamette Valley. Gervais was a French Canadian fur trapper who spent roughly twenty years working for the Pacific Fur Company, the North West Company, and the Hudson's Bay Company before retiring to French Prairie in the early eighteen thirties.
The town sits on French Prairie near where Gervais made his claim. The railroad arrived and the post office was established, and the community incorporated in eighteen seventy-four as Gervais, honoring the man who had helped open this whole valley to European settlement decades before most emigrants ever heard of the Oregon Trail.
