Scottish immigrant Donald MacKenzie, a partner in the Pacific Fur Company out of Astoria, left Fort Astoria in 1812 for an expedition in the Willamette Valley that lasted six weeks. That was long enough for the name “MacKenzie’s Fork” to appear on a map made by the Hudson Bay Company in 1824 and again in 1841 on this map made during the Wilkes Expedition. MacKenzie went back east due to the War of 1812 and never returned to see the river that was named for him.