In 1852 an estimated 50,000 pioneers passed Independence Rock on their way west, including 21-year-old Ezra Meeker, his wife Eliza, and their infant son, who reached Puget Sound in Washington Territory in October 1852 and later settled in the Puyallup Valley, where they experienced both success and failure in farming, especially raising hops. Aware of the Oregon Trail's national significance in the development of the American Pacific Northwest, Meeker wrote several books about it. In 1906, concerned that the trail would fade from memory, he retraced it eastward with a covered wagon and ox-team in what he called the Ox-Team Monument Expedition, aiming to permanently mark the trail. His age, appearance, promotional skill, and enthusiasm drew generous support from communities along the route, and stone monuments came to mark the trail from The Dalles, Oregon, across the mountains and plains to Kansas. At Independence Rock on July 3, 1906, after driving from Devil's Gate and camping there, he chose a place on the westward sloping face of the rock for the inscription "Old Oregon Trail, 1843-57," cut it as deeply as possible with a dulled cold chisel, and painted the sunken letters, while expressing hope that the inscription would last for centuries and that other painted trail inscriptions would someday be cut deeply into stone. He continued his 1906 journey through major eastern cities to Washington, D.C., where he met President Roosevelt on November 29, and in later years he continued promoting the Oregon Trail, traveling it in 1916 in a Pathfinder model automobile and in 1924 flying over it with army pilots. Meeker died in Seattle, Washington, at age 97 on December 3, 1928.