Nemah Pacific County, Washington

Name: Nemah
Address: Washington

NEMAH: Farming community on Highway 101 and the Nemah rivers. Nemah is the site of an old Indian village and was a logging camp, 1890s to 1920s. A small band of Chinook Indians known as the "Marhoo" or "Nemar" camped on the river, fished for salmon and gathered oysters prior to the arrival of white settlers. The community developed near the mouth, or delta, of the three Nemah rivers (North, Middle and West Fork) in the 1890s. Farmers and loggers originally called their settlement "Nema", a derivation of the Indian name. Later the spelling was changed to "Nemah" when the post office department established an office on December 10, 1894. The office was closed March 15, 1923. Access to the settlement was by water until the Ocean Beach highway was built in the 1920s. A logging railroad connected Nemah with several camps in the Willapa Hills - during and after World War I. The Spruce Division had several camps on the river in 1918. The Nemah Community hall (formerly the schoolhouse), and several homes and farms, are all that remain of the community.

Mapped Location

Nemah: The mapped location is an approximation and should not be used for navigation or wayfinding.

Information

General information on Nemah

Feature Type: Place

Official, historical, colloquial and alternative toponyms for Nemah

A brief list of names that this geographic feature has been named

Name	Description
Nemah	Official

Origin Notes and History of Nemah

References to Nemah that document the origin of its place name

NEMAH, a town on the site of an old Indian village of the same name at the mouth of a river flowing into Willapa Bay. The river is also called Nemah or Nemar. There are many spellings of the word, which is an Indian word of unknown meaning. It may have come from one of the tribes of southwestern Washington, which have become extinct. (L. L. Bush to George W. Prior, in Names MSS. Letter 184.)

Edmond S. Meany in Origin of Washington Geographic Names

Meany, Edmond S., Origin of Washington Geographic Names, 1923 University of Washington, pp 186 | Origin of Washington Geographic Names

Pacific County

Political Boundaries

Last updated: 2026-09-27