If anyone not from Emerson Valley were to come for a visit, they’d be forgiven for their confusion when it comes to our lovely river, Silver Creek River. First and foremost in causing this bewilderment is the fact that the river has a name with both “creek” and “river” in it. Normally, “river” and “creek” denote very different bodies of water. So what gives? Are we stupid? Yes, but not for this reason.

Silver Creek River was originally called “Miskwihanna” by the Mattaponi Native American tribe that lived in what would later become Emerson Valley. In their dialect of the Algonquian language, it meant “river of blood.” This paired well with their name for Blackwood Forest, which was “Nibowin’mitigwaaki,” or “forest of death.”

After the first European colonists arrived in the valley around 1610, they called the river the King James River. Several years later, they discovered that there was already a King James River in Virginia. Randolph Emerson, the founder of Emersontown, decided to change the name to the Prince Charles River. When Charles I ascended to the throne of England, it was changed again to the King Charles River.

After Charles I was executed in 1649, the town once more changed its name, vowing to stop using the names of English kings. And so the King Charles River became the Deepwater River. By 1699, the original settlement of Emersontown was abandoned in favor of more arable land, resulting in the founding of Harrisontown. The settlers of Harrisontown dammed the river to create a lake for their new settlement, which caused the Deepwater River to become not very deep at all.

Seeing as how the former river was now more of a creek, it was renamed Silver Creek. The Great Chesapeake Bay Hurricane of 1769 destroyed the dam and flooded Harrisontown, washing away most of the settlement. It was around this time that the town’s founder, James Harrison, was exposed as a murderer, so when the town was reestablished, they decided to call it Emerson Valley. Even though the creek was once again a river, the townsfolk were tired of renaming things, so they just added “River” to the end of Silver Creek and called it a day. The name has stuck ever since.

Despite all the name changes, Silver Creek River is still the same river that the Mattaponi called the “river of blood.” You have to wonder what they saw that the European colonists failed to see? Maybe it’s not this land, but turning a blind eye to danger that is our true inheritance. If you don’t believe me, answer me this: how many bodies have washed ashore from Silver Creek River in the last 50 years? I haven’t counted myself, but I’ll bet it’s more than it should be.

So go ahead—keep letting your children splash around in it on a hot summer day. Take them camping in the forest and cast your reels into the water. Just pray that you don’t hook yourself a nice fresh corpse. Actually, scratch that. Pray you don’t become that fresh corpse. It’s fun to learn new things, isn’t it?

-Ashton Rook, Lifestyle, Emerson Valley Gazette