Between 1843 and 1869, more than 300,000 emigrants voluntarily relocated to Oregon and California in fulfillment of America's Manifest Destiny, traveling nearly 2,000 miles along game trails long used by early Native Americans on what became known as the Oregon Trail. Many early pioneers passed this site, stopping to trade first with the Native Americans living here and later with travelers who made the Boise area their new home, and emigrant diaries record that the trail's route passed here. One early emigrant, Ezra Meeker, later returned along the route near here in 1906 and 1910 at age 76 to seek protection and preservation of the Oregon Trail as an important part of American historical heritage. Sculptor Avard Fairbanks, moved by Meeker's effort, created a bronze sculpture later recast here, and his Medallion captured the anguish and hardships of the early pioneers while preserving the memory of that long journey to a new beginning made by many Americans.