Cuivre River

The Cuivre River is a 41.6-mile-long (66.9 km)^[1] river in the east central part of the state of Missouri, north of the Missouri River terminus. A good part of its course marks the borders between Lincoln and St. Charles counties before emptying into the Mississippi River north of St. Louis. The Cuivre River State Park near Troy has its southwestern borders on the river. The river is declared not to be a navigable stream.

The Cuivre River received its name from French-speaking settlers during the French Louisiana. The name means "copper", though none is present along the river, and it is thought to have been named after Baron Georges Leopold Cuvier,^[2] a French naturalist and paleontologist, who was first to do comparative anatomy and the classification of animals and fossils. When France acquired the territory west of the Mississippi River, Cuvier sent two of his students to America to get specimens of flora and fauna and to assess the climate and topography of the new acquisition. When the young men reached the river in what is now the Lincoln County area, it was known to the local French as Rivière aux Boeufs because of the numerous bison roaming its banks.^[3] The two scientists decided a more impressive name for the stream would be "Cuvier", and labeled it such on their maps. When the English-speaking settlers arrived, the spelling was changed to "Cuivre" and the pronunciation anglicized to "Quiver".^[4]

The Battle of the Sink Hole was fought near the mouth of the Cuivre at the end of the War of 1812.

References

1. U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National Map Archived 2012-04-05 at WebCite, accessed May 13, 2011
2. Earngey, Bill (October 1995). Missouri Roadsides: The Traveler's Companion. University of Missouri Press. ISBN 9780826210210.
3. State Historical Society of Missouri: St. Charles County
4. State Historical Society of Missouri: Lincoln County

Coordinates: 38°56′00″N 90°41′11″W / 38.9334°N 90.6865°W