Oregon Trail Memorial Half Dollar - Background

Background

In the middle years of the 19th century, before the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 made travel easier, hundreds of thousands of people journeyed along the Oregon Trail to settle the Far West of the United States. Not all who began the journey reached their destination as there was much suffering and death along the way—by one estimate, 20,000 people lie in unmarked graves.

Ohio-born farmer Ezra Meeker (1830–1928) traveled the Oregon Trail in 1852; he and his young wife and infant child went by ox-drawn wagon from Iowa to Oregon Territory. He found wealth in the West, and in his old age came to believe that the Oregon Trail, and the sacrifice of those who had died along it, were being forgotten. Amid immense publicity as one of the last survivors of the pioneers who had blazed the way west, Meeker retraced his route along the Trail between 1906 and 1908, first west to east, and then in the direction in which he had first traveled it. The Trail had in some places disappeared, swallowed up by town and farm, and he sought to find where he had passed, pointing out important places along the Trail in the hope that historical markers would rise. He took his oxen team and wagon across the nation to publicize his cause, parking his rig in front of the White House where he met President Theodore Roosevelt. In New York, he crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, and in Pasadena he and his oxen participated in the Tournament of Roses Parade. In the succeeding years, he traveled the route by oxcart, automobile, and, at age 92 in 1923, airplane, attempting to further his cause, and seeking federal recognition and funding for his efforts.