Map of St. Paul city, Oregon

St. Paul is a city in Marion County, Oregon, United States. It is named after the Saint Paul Mission founded by Archbishop François Norbert Blanchet, who arrived in the Oregon Country in 1838 to minister to the Catholic inhabitants of French Prairie. The population was 434 at the 2020 census. The city is part of the Salem Metropolitan Statistical Area.

St. Paul city overview:
Name:	St. Paul city
LSAD Code:	25
LSAD Description:	city (suffix)
State:	Oregon
County:	Marion County
Incorporated:	1901
Elevation:	169 ft (51.5 m)
Total Area:	0.29 sq mi (0.76 km²)
Land Area:	0.29 sq mi (0.76 km²)
Water Area:	0.00 sq mi (0.00 km²)
Total Population:	434
Population Density:	1,476.19/sq mi (569.49/km²)
ZIP code:	97137
Area code:	503 and 971
FIPS code:	4164850
GNISfeature ID:	1163248

Online Interactive Map

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St. Paul online map. Source: Basemap layers from Google Map, Open Street Map (OSM), Arcgisonline, Wmflabs. Boundary Data from Database of Global Administrative Areas.

St. Paul location map. Where is St. Paul city?

St. Paul location on the U.S. Map. Where is St. Paul city. — St. Paul location on the U.S. Map.

St. Paul location on the Oregon map. Where is St. Paul city. — Location of St. Paul in Oregon.

History

French Prairie settlers built a log church near this locale in 1836. On January 6, 1839, Father (later Archbishop) Blanchet celebrated the first Catholic mass in Oregon at St. Paul, when he blessed the log church and dedicated it to St. Paul.

St. Paul Roman Catholic Church was built in 1846 and is the oldest brick building in the Pacific Northwest.

St. Paul post office was established in 1874. The city was incorporated in 1901.

Pioneer cemetery

St. Paul Pioneer Cemetery, founded in 1839, is the burial location for William Cannon, the only authenticated Revolutionary War veteran buried in Oregon. He had arrived in Oregon in 1811 as part of John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company. His is the only grave marked with an upright headstone in the cemetery. Only one other grave is marked; the rest of the grave markers were mistakenly bulldozed in the 1930s.

Along with Cannon, 535 other early settlers and Native Americans are buried in the pioneer cemetery, including Étienne Lucier, known as “The Father of Oregon Agriculture”, and François Rivet and Philippe Degre who claimed to be members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Rivet had accompanied the expedition as far as Fort Mandan, and Degre attached himself in to the company while they wintered there in 1804–1805.

A wall of remembrance in the cemetery was dedicated in 2005, with members of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon as honored guests. Early French Canadian settlers often married women from the local tribes, which included the Clackamas, Molala and Kalapuya.

Archbishop Blanchet was originally buried in the pioneer cemetery, but his remains were later moved to St. Paul Catholic Cemetery a few blocks away. The new cemetery was founded in 1875 and includes a “Nuns Corner”, where several sisters who had originally been buried in a corner of the convent garden were reinterred. Early settler and provisional legislator William J. Bailey is also buried at the new cemetery.