Silverton is a city in Marion County, Oregon, United States. The city is situated along the 45th parallel nearly 12 miles (19 km) northeast of Salem, in the eastern margins of the broad alluvial plain of the Willamette Valley. The city is named after Silver Creek, which flows through the town from Silver Falls into the Pudding River, and thence into the Willamette River. The community of Milford was founded in 1846 taking into consideration a sawmill, store and several other buildings two miles upstream from the present location of Silverton. In practically 1853 a second sawmill was built on Silver Creek close where the Silverton city hall now stands. In 1854 the town of Silverton was platted and registered in imitation of Marion County. Human habitation of the Silverton area extends back approximately 6,000 years past the present. In historical times, the region was dominated by the Kalapuya and Molala peoples, whose seasonal burns of the area made it plow-ready and attractive to at the forefront 19th century Euro-American settlers. Farming was Silverton’s first major industry, and has been a dominant land-use to-do in and going on for Silverton in the past the mid-19th century.

Silverton is portion of the Salem Metropolitan Statistical Area, and the population core of the Silver Falls School District. The population was 9,222 at the times of the 2010 census.

Silverton is situated upon the eastern edge of the Willamette Valley, a fruitful and alluvial plain which stretches from the western foothills of the Cascade Range upon the east, known as the Waldo Hills, to the eastern foothills of the Oregon Coast Range upon the west. Silverton lies upon either side of Silver Creek, a tributary of the Pudding River, which joins the Molalla River previously emptying into the northward-flowing Willamette River. Abiqua Creek moreover empties into the Pudding River; it flows across the eastern valley north of Silverton, further draining the land in the region of the city.

Silverton’s height above sea level is in the midst of 200 and 250 feet (61 and 76 m) above goal sea level similar to the steep-sided, heavily-wooded Waldo Hills to the south rising an additional 200 feet (61 m). The agricultural richness of the environs is due to supreme and repeated floods from archaic Lake Missoula in western Montana. Beginning nearly 13,000 years before the present, repeated flooding from Lake Missoula scoured eastern Washington and Oregon, carved out the Columbia River Gorge, and periodically swept beside the Columbia River; when floodwaters met ice jams in southwest Washington, the backed-up water spilled over and filled altogether Willamette Valley to a depth of 300 to 400 feet (91 to 122 m) above current sea level, creating a body of water known as Lake Allison. The gradual receding of Lake Allison’s waters left layered sedimentary volcanic and glacial soils to a top of virtually 180 to 200 feet (55 to 61 m) above current sea level throughout the Tualatin, Yamhill and Willamette Valleys.