Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 79, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1907 — OVER THE OLD OREGON TRAIL. [ARTICLE]

OVER THE OLD OREGON TRAIL.

Bara Meeker Seeks to Have Famous Roadway Improved to Coast. Ezra Meeker, white-haired old pioneer of the golden West, in his wagon drawn by a yoke of oxen, "crawled" into Columbus about 5 o’clock Sunday evening over the old Oregon trail and immediately paid his respects to Mayor Barger, who gave him the freedom of the city, says the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. “Farmer” Meeker, as he calls himself, left Tacoma, Wash., Jan. 29, 1906, and has traveled 2,800 miles at the rate of fifteen or twenty miles a day. He" follows the old Oregon trail, but declares that it is not what it was when he traversed It in his younger days. The trail branches off into asphalt streets, lined with mansions; In turn it becomes a country road and then a main thoroughfare, and “Farmer” Meeker says that he has some difficulty in following it with his team of oxen, but up to date he has not gone astray. __ “I am making the trip because I think the old road should be memorialized. I am going to Washington with my team and will try to get the proper authorities to agitate a movement to have the trail relaid as a concrete road, reaching from the Mississippi to the Pacific coast,” Skid the aged traveler. “I went to the State of Washington from Indianapolis in 1852. I followed the Oregon trail in an ox cart like thi9 one. On the way back I have met a few friends whom I had known before I went .West, but not many. I am 76 years of age.”