Puyallup’s Ezra Meeker lauded in new book for saving the Oregon Trail
Near Oregon’s Emigrant Springs State Heritage Area, there’s a wooden sign to commemorate the Oregon Trail and the thousands who traveled it.
In 1999, the signpost — just off the I-84 in the Blue Mountains — caught Dennis Larsen’s attention and inspired him to question where more historic markers were.
Twenty-one years of research and cross-country trips later, the retired Yelm High School history teacher’s interest in the Oregon Trail has become solely focused on documenting the life of Puyallup’s Ezra Meeker.
Larsen’s fourth and final book on Meeker was published by Washington State University Press in March.
“Saving the Oregon Trail: Ezra Meeker’s Last Grand Quest” delves into Meeker’s continual effort to preserve the route that brought him out West.
After moving to Puyallup, starting a hops farm and traversing the Klondike, Meeker realized the Oregon Trail had started to disappear into development. In 1906, he took his first of five trips along the trail: twice by covered wagon, followed by an RV trip in 1916, by plane in 1924 and a final time by car in 1926.
Larsen said if it weren’t for Meeker, the Oregon Trail would not have the notoriety it does today, and the route would have been wiped away and forgotten. Meeker met with President Theodore Roosevelt and pushed a bill to save the Oregon Trail that was eventually passed by Congress in 1926.
Meeker also created a group to preserve the Oregon Trail, now known as Oregon-California Trails Association. Congress allowed the organization to sell 50-cent coins to commemorate the trail, and they started to place markers along the 2,170-mile route.
“His efforts were successful beyond his wildest dreams,” Larsen said.
Meeker’s life
Meeker was Puyallup’s first mayor. His mansion still stands as a museum in the middle of Puyallup to tell the history of the Meekers, the Oregon Trail and the Puyallup Valley.
He was a controversial figure.
“He was a man ahead of his time,” Larsen said. “People either loved him or hated him.”
Meeker was a vocal activist for local Native Americans.
He wrote “The Tragedy of Leschi,” in 1905 about a chief of the Nisqually Indian Tribe, who was accused and eventually found guilty of murder during the Yakima Wars. Meeker, who served on the initial jury, voted to acquit the chief. There was a second trial in 1858, and Leschi was convicted and hanged. In 2004, Leschi was exonerated by the state of Washington.
Meeker also spoke out against the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which suspended Chinese immigration for 10 years and declared Chinese immigrants ineligible for naturalization.
“It’s probably why he lost for Congress,” Larsen said.
Meeker died at 98 in 1928 after a life of trailblazing. Larsen said his last words were, “I can’t go yet, I’ve got too much work to do.”
Now retired, Larsen, his wife and other history-enthusiasts took a covered wagon, an ox team and a trailer across the country to teach families about Meeker and the Oregon Trail in the summer of 2006. The road trip commemorated the 100th anniversary of one of Meeker’s trips.
Larsen, who lives in Olympia, gives lectures around the area about the national significance of the local figure. He met another Oregon Trail historian in Wyoming, and the two went off-roading on what remains of the real trail.
“I’m retired, so I needed a project and I fell in love with this,” Larsen said. “It’s been quite an adventure.”
“Saving the Oregon Trail: Ezra Meeker’s Last Grand Quest” can be purchased online or at bookstores. Larsen’s other books on Meeker include “The Missing Chapters: The Untold Story of Ezra Meeker’s Old Oregon Trail Monument Expedition,” “Slick as a Mitten: Ezra Meeker’s Klondike Enterprise,” and “Hop King: Ezra Meeker’s Boom Years.”
