This marks the land claim of Joseph L. Meek, famed and
unlettered ”mountain man,” who arrived in 1840 after driving from
Fort Hall to Walla Walla in the first wagon on that part of the
Oregon Trail. He was a founder of the Provisional Government;
served as the first sheriff, the first marshal, the first census
taker. He carried word of the Whitman Massacre to Washington D.C.,
where President Polk, whose wife was his cousin, received him.
Named marshal under the New Territorial Government, he accompanied
Governor Lane to Oregon. His final Indian fighting was as a soldier
in the Yakima War, 1855-56. He died here in 1875. A neighbor called
him: “very popular and as brave as Julius Caesar.”
