Jewell was name after Marshall Jewell, postmaster general from 1874 to 1876 by the community's first postmaster W.H. Kirkpatrick. It was so named in 1874. Jewell is strategically located where the Nehalem River turns south and makes it mad dash through the Coast Range to the sea. The Nehalem Valley is broad and flat east all the way to Mist and even to Natal, and this area has long been settled. In accordance with the tradition of naming the gateway to a destination for the destination Clatskanie, on the Columbia River, takes its name from the Native American people's name for the hunting grounds between Jewell and Mist. One of the earliest electric cooperatives in Oregon brought power purchased from Pacific Power and Light (Now Pacificorp) over the hill from Olney to Jewell and Elsie. In 1944, this Lower Nehalem Valley Cooperative became one of the pieces out of which West Oregon Electric Cooperative was formed.
Today Jewell lives on with its own k-12 school system, telephone exchange, (which is long distance to everywhere) and grange hall.