How Salem, Oregon Got Its Name (And Who Gets the Credit)

Salem, Oregon, sits on a spot the Native people called Chemeketa, and historians still argue over who gave the future state capital its new name. The name itself is the Bible’s Salem, from a Hebrew word for “peace,” and the oldest account we found says it came by way of Salem, Massachusetts.

Chemeketa first

The Methodist missionaries who came to the Willamette Valley in the 1830s picked a broad, fertile plain about ten miles south of their first mission for a new settlement. Hubert Howe Bancroft’s History of Oregon, published in the 1880s, says “The place was called by the natives Chemeketa, that is to say, ‘Here we Rest.’” For that translation he cites a pioneer’s manuscript, not a study of the language. The Willamette Heritage Center in Salem says today that nobody knows what the word meant to the local Native people. So you’ll see “resting place” a lot, but treat it as a guess that stuck.

A school, then a town

When the mission sold off its property, the trustees of the Oregon Institute bought its big school building on the Chemeketa plain for $4,000. A school for white children opened there in the fall of 1844, and it grew into Willamette University. Soon after, Bancroft writes, the trustees decided to lay out a town on the institute’s land. It was “surveyed into lots and blocks, and named Salem by Leslie, president of the board of trustees.”

That’s the Rev. David Leslie, who had come out in 1837 as a reinforcement for the mission. Bancroft introduces him as “the Rev. David Leslie of Salem, Massachusetts.” In his second volume, Bancroft spells it out: Salem “was named by David Leslie, after Salem, Mass., in preference to Chemeketa, the native name, which should have been retained.” That last bit was Bancroft’s own opinion, and he didn’t hide it.

A name that means peace

Whoever chose it, nobody disputes what the word is. The U.S. Geological Survey’s 1905 guide to place names, compiled by Henry Gannett, puts Oregon’s Salem in the same entry as Salem, Massachusetts, and Salem, North Carolina, and explains: “A Hebrew word meaning ‘peace.’”

The capital did wander for a while. David Fagan’s 1885 history of Benton County says Corvallis held it “for some months” in 1855. But if you look up Salem in the federal place-name record today, it’s listed simply as “Capital of State of Oregon.”

Or was it Willson?

Not everyone gives Leslie the credit. The Oregon Blue Book, the state’s official almanac, credits William H. Willson, who filed the plats for what became the main part of the city in 1850 and 1851. The Willamette Heritage Center lays out the dispute instead of settling it: it says the Rev. Josiah Parrish suggested Chemeketa when the town was laid out, raises the idea that Leslie came up with Salem by shortening “Jerusalem,” and notes that historians don’t agree on who deserves the credit.

So here’s where it stands. The earliest printed history we found names Leslie and ties the name to his hometown. Later accounts point to Willson. None of the sources we read quotes a document from the time that settles it, so the honest answer is that it’s disputed.

Sources & further reading

• Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Oregon, vol. 1 (1886). David Leslie “of Salem, Massachusetts” (p. 161), Chemeketa and “Here we Rest” (p. 191), and the trustees’ town “named Salem by Leslie” (p. 222).
• Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Oregon, vol. 2 (1888), p. 716. “Named by David Leslie, after Salem, Mass., in preference to Chemeketa.”
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 272. Salem as “A Hebrew word meaning ‘peace.’”
• Willamette Heritage Center, “How Did Salem Get its Name.” Josiah Parrish and Chemeketa, the “Jerusalem” idea, the unknown meaning of Chemeketa, and the disagreement among historians.
• Oregon Blue Book, “Oregon’s Capital: Salem.” Credits William H. Willson, who filed the plats in 1850–51.
• David D. Fagan, History of Benton County, Oregon (1885), p. 333. Corvallis as the capital “for some months” in 1855.
• GNIS feature 1167861 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record: “Capital of State of Oregon.”