Evan Meeker, 1921.

Showing his wagon to President Theodore Roosevelt, 1908.

Meeting President Calvin Coolidge, 1924.

The Meeker store in Tacoma.

Meeker in Iowa in 1908 retracing the Great Migration.

Evan Meeker, Detroit, 1928, last photo.

When Ezra Meeker passed away just over 88 years ago, he took with him a lot of institutional memory–and the institution was America.

A pioneer who traveled the Oregon trail in his youth in 1852 just before ferries and steamships thinned the herd moving west by cart and covered wagon, Meeker spent much of his dotage trying to ensure history would remember those who endured such treacherous crossings to open up the country. He wasn’t exactly a reenactor even if he always retained the raggedness of a pioneer and retraced the trip numerous times by ox-driven cart in the first decades of the twentieth century. Meeker was more a sort of traveling salesman, peddling a fascinating period of our history to Presidents and the public alike, not for personal gain but for posterity, urging the establishment of monuments to this epoch.

It’s important to note that in the big picture Manifest Destiny was a tragedy for Native peoples, though Meeker himself enjoyed a particularly good relationship with Indians, as they were then called, collaborating and trading rather than fighting. If only we’d followed that example.

An article announced the passing of Meeker’s own monumental presence in the December 3, 1928 Brooklyn Daily Eagle.