Ezra Meeker

Reproduction of the original: The Busy Life of Eighty-Five Years of Ezra Meeker by Ezra Meeker

Ezra Meeker's famous recollections of life in the American wilderness are published here complete with the one hundred and twenty original photographs and illustrations. In his memoir, Ezra Meeker casts his mind back to his early years growing up in Indiana during the 1830s and 1840s. He recalls setting off for Iowa and Oregon along the long and winding Western trail; the Gold Rush, which fueled migration to the farthest reaches of the continent, is remembered with evocative clarity. Meeker recalls the lives and characteristics of the Native American peoples, and the fellow migrants he met on his travels. Meeker pens valuable descriptions of the varied wilderness; the dusty plains, towering mountains, dense forests and barren deserts of America are described with moving vividness. Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail is therefore a retrospective of the United States as it grew in size and influence over almost a century, as well as a depiction of the nation's beauty and vastness.

Ezra Meeker's famous recollections of life in the American wilderness are published here complete with the one hundred and twenty original photographs and illustrations. In his memoir, Ezra Meeker casts his mind back to his early years growing up in Indiana during the 1830s and 1840s. He recalls setting off for Iowa and Oregon along the long and winding Western trail; the Gold Rush, which fueled migration to the farthest reaches of the continent, is remembered with evocative clarity. Meeker recalls the lives and characteristics of the Native American peoples, and the fellow migrants he met on his travels. Meeker pens valuable descriptions of the varied wilderness; the dusty plains, towering mountains, dense forests and barren deserts of America are described with moving vividness. Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail is therefore a retrospective of the United States as it grew in size and influence over almost a century, as well as a depiction of the nation's beauty and vastness.

He was an adventurer, laborer, surveyor, longshoreman, farmer, merchant, community leader, civic builder, richest man in the state, world traveler, miner and writer. He made and lost millions. He was the charming, witty, Ezra Meeker. He was one of hundreds of thousands who left behind all they knew and set out on the Oregon Trail. He came to Washington Territory and left a mark that to this day is felt in the region. Here is the story of those hardy pioneers with whom Meeker shared adventures, perils, and laughter while building a new state out of the rough frontier north of the Columbia River. Among others that he wrote, this book is one of the best pioneer narratives from any section of the country. Though he lived in Washington at a time of so-called "Indian troubles," to the end of his days he remained the friend of many Native Americans and had sympathy for what he felt was a raw deal they received from the government. Every memoir of the American West provides us with another view of the westward expansion that changed the country forever.