Marysville: Named for Maria, Built on Tulalip Land
Washington
The city of Marysville takes its name from Maria Comeford, the wife of the man who founded it. James Comeford arrived in the early eighteen seventies while working for the Tulalip Indian Agency, noticed a trading post at Smith Cove, and in the mid eighteen seventies purchased twelve hundred eighty acres from local timber traders for four hundred fifty dollars. When the Great Northern railroad came through in eighteen ninety-one, the town filled in fast.
The Tulalip Tribes, whose reservation sits just west of town, trace their roots to the Point Elliott Treaty of January twenty-second, eighteen fifty-five, which brought together the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skykomish, and other peoples of the Puget Sound shores. The city and the reservation have grown up alongside each other ever since, a relationship more complicated than most interstate highway exits suggest.
