Joseph Lafayette “Joe” Meek was a trapper, trader, pioneer, lawman, and politician who was important during the establishment of Oregon Territory.
Meek was born in Washington County, Virginia, nearby Cumberland Gap, on February 9, 1810, to Captain James Meek, Jr. and Spicy Walker Meek. Meek was propelled westward at an early age by a disagreeable stepmother. He first went to Lexington, Missouri, where he joined two of his brothers.
In 1829, at the age of 19, he had signed on with William Sublette as a Rocky Mountain Fur Company trapper, and for the next eleven years, he lived the strenuous life of a mountain man. The young man soon traveled with a trapping party along the Yellowstone River when the trappers were scattered by a band of Blackfoot Indians. Meek then explored what is today Yellowstone National Park. He would later describe it in his biography:
“The whole country beyond was smoking with the vapor from boiling springs and burning with gasses, issuing from small craters, each of which was emitting a sharp whistling sound.”
