Ezra Meeker (1830–1928) was an early pioneer who traveled the Oregon Trail by ox cart as a young man. In his late years he worked tirelessly to memorialize the trail, and retraced the trip of his youth.

Born, in Huntsville, Ohio, to Jacob and Phoebe Meeker, the family relocated to Indiana, in 1840. Married in 1851, in 1852, with his wife and his newborn son, he went to Oregon near Puget Sound. They settled permanently in Puyallup in 1862, where Meeker began growing hops, used in brewing beer. By 1885 his business had made him wealthy, and he was known as the Hops King of the World. Then, in 1891, an infestation of hops aphids destroyed his crops and all but ruined him. He subsequently tried a number of ventures, including dehydrating fruits and vegetables, working on packaging milk in paper containers and he made four mostly unsuccessful trips to the Klondike looking for gold. He also wrote a romance novel about his experiences on the trip west.

In 1906, at the age of 76, he decided that the nation had forgotten the Oregon Trail, and that it deserved better. He assembled a covered wagon and a team of oxen and headed east over the Oregon Trail, raising money as he went. At each town along the way he would stop and make speeches encouraging the preservation of the Oregon Trail route. As the trip progressed, publicity started to build, so that he began to find that towns had raised funds and organized memorials in advance of his arrival.

After reaching the start of the Oregon Trail, he decided to extend his trip all the way to Washington, DC via New York City (where he was granted a permit to drive his team down Fifth Avenue. In Washington, he met with President Theodore Roosevelt who expressed interest working to preserve the trail, and who came out to visit Meekers oxen.

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