English: Oregon Trail pioneer Ezra Meeker erected this marker at South Pass, Wyo., (elevation 7,550 ft) as he retraced the trail by covered wagon in 1906. Meeker countered the historical pioneer route in his 1906 reenactment by trekking west to east. A newspaper report in 1915 noted that Meeker claimed he traveled 84 miles out of his way to find the boulder pictured here. If true, that would have been a remarkable detour.

Meeker first traveled the Oregon Trail as an emigrant with his wife, Eliza Jane and an infant son in 1852. Meeker sought to spur national interest in the historic trail. He imagined constructing a commemorative transcontinental highway alongside the route of the old trail, according to a 1907 Ohio State Journal article.

Photo by: Randy C. Bunney, circa 1993. Red Desert, Wyoming

• Washington State Historical Society
• Ohio State Journal, 1907.
• Evening Post (Seattle), 1915 reprinted "Story of the Lost Trail to Oregon. Ye Galleon Press, 1984.