Cuivre River

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The Cuivre River is 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 the counties of Lincoln and St. Charles before emptying into the Mississippi River north of St. Louis, Missouri. The Cuivre River State Park near Troy, Missouri has its southwestern borders on the river. The river is declared not to be a navigable stream, and shall be so treated by the Secretary of the Army.

ORIGIN OF NAME

• The Cuivre River received its name from French speaking settlers during the French Louisiana. "Cuivre" is the french word for copper.

• The Cuivre River received its name from Baron Georges Leopold Cuvier^{[citation needed]}, the great 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 what is now the Lincoln County area, they found a lovely river which the French were calling "Rivière aux Boeufs" because of the numerous buffalo roaming its banks.^{[citation needed]}The two budding scientists decided a more impressive name for the lively stream would be Cuvier and this is what they used on the maps they were making. When the English speaking settlers came the spelling was changed to Cuivre and they anglicized the pronunciation to "Quiver". Because the French word for copper is spelled "cuivre" the American settlers mistakenly assumed the French intended the name to be the "Copper River". Thus the name of a great man, who rose from a poor village boy to world wide recognition, was forgotten.^{[citation needed]}