MARGARET River township was gazetted on February 7,1913, after the Margaret River Progress Association, in 1910, asked the Minister for Lands to declare a township at Upper Margaret River bridge.
The association’s plea was to avoid public buildings being dotted “several miles apart in the near future”.
As noted by Jan Matthews in a new book on local history, the majority of settlers lived around the Lower Margaret River bridge, on Caves Rd (now called Peirce Bridge), and at first this was seen as the best place for the township.
This was knocked back by the Perth government deciding that there were too many large landholdings in private ownership to make it a suitable site.
Instead, 1000 acres around the Upper Margaret River Bridge was gazetted for the town.
In 1918 it was decided that having the town and the river called the same name was confusing, and so the town’s name was officially shortened to Margaret.
However, in 1924 the new railway siding was named Margaret River, and the postmaster asked that the name be changed back.
This was refused, but in 1927 the undersecretary for lands was advised by the surveyor-general that the name should revert to the original, simply because everyone called it that.
