Historic Hood River
Washington, DC
1-8-2021
Notes
The culmination of Meeker’s trip was a visit to Washington DC, where he met with President Roosevelt and successfully lobbied Congress for funding to mark the route of the Oregon Trail. He said of this visit:
No one on my whole trip evinced a livelier interest in the work of monumenting the Oregon Trail than did President Roosevelt. I had been twenty two months to a day in reaching Washington City with my ox team; he had granted me a long audience in the cabinet room and then came out to see the team.
Category: default
Tags: 1900s, dog, Meeker, Oregon Trail, postcard, Theodore Roosevelt, Washington DC
Tags: 1900s, dog, Meeker, Oregon Trail, postcard, Theodore Roosevelt, Washington DC
Kate
It looks like Roosevelt was cut and pasted into this image (?) but hard to tell from the screen I’m viewing on. Regardless, 22 months in a wagon deserves some recognition!
kmb
It does look like TR is floating on air. Not having Photoshop back then, don’t know what their technology was to doctor photos. Presumably they had to literally cut out a photo of TR from another picture and paste it onto the original photo above? Glad to see Jim the dog made it 🙂
L.E.
Thanks Arthur for this series of photos. I have been reading other articles about Meeker and learning about his life. On this 1906-1907 trip, he was in Indianapolis on January 7th. Couldn’t have been the best weather to be living in a wagon.
He had a driver, William Marden who made the trip with him.
There is another photo of yesterday’s photo, which looks like Marden was either photo shopped in or out of standing behind the wagon.
Meeker purchased a camera in Pendleton, so he could start taking photos. Selling the photos helped raise money for the venture.
They reached Washington DC in September, after spending time in New York. Roosevelt did go outside with Meeker to view his ox team and wagon.
What is amazing is that Meeker, Jim and Dave and Dandy did this journey again in 1910. His wife, Eliza, who had been ill during this 1907 trip, passed away in 1909.
ArthurB
Preparing a photo like this for a lithograph to make a postcard involves some touchup. What I see here, as someone with experience touching up photos, is they did some work on the runner at TRs feet. The shadows got messed up in the process. Shadows of feet are one of the major visual clues to grounding a person in a photo. TR was there, but his feet got retouched and lost their shadows.
Ellen
If you know DC, they are positioned across from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, 1871- 1888, with a tie to Oregon. The architect, Alfred B Mullett, also designed Pioneer Courthouse in Portland which was being built during the same time period, 1869 – 1875. The Executive Office has 900 exterior columns! You can see many of them in the photo.
DAVID LYNN JOHNSON
I have a book written and signed by him. He was a hop farmer.