Marys Peak, the highest summit in the Oregon Coast Range and in Benton County, has long been a place of natural prominence, broad views, and cultural importance. For the Kalapuya people, chatímanwi was a spiritually powerful mountain tied to oral history, prayer, healing, and traditional gathering, hunting, and fishing before their forced removal by the United States government in 1856. Later settlers gave the mountain its English name, and uses of the area included a short-lived community, Corvallis’s municipal water supply, and public events. Its summit meadow, rock gardens, forests, and rare plants led to protected status in 1989, and it remains a site of scientific study and Native place-name recognition.