‘One of the Oregon Country’s most picturesque fur-traders, Thomas McKay, is buried near Scappoose. He was a daring leader, famous storyteller and could drive a nail with a rifle ball. A Canadian, he arrived with Astorians as a teenage boy; served with North West Company, became a clerk with the Hudson’s Bay Company, established a grist mill at Champoeg.

Alexander McKay, a victim of the Tonquin Massacre was his father and Dr. John McLaughlin was his stepfather. He ranged widely, built Fort Boise, Idaho, guided goldseekers to California. He died on his farm near this point in the winter 1849-1850.

First known as Lee's Encampment, from establishment of a troop camp by Major H.A.G. Lee in 1844, A.B. and Harvey Meacham operated famous "Mountain House" here, which gave the town its present name.

In later years a famous railroad eating house, "The Log Cabin," became nationally known under the supervision of Grandma Munra, a well known pioneer figure.

On July 3, 1923, Meacham was the capitol of the United States when President Warren G. Harding stopped for a day and participated in the exercises commemorating the eightieth anniversary of the covered wagon migration of 1843.

This marks the land claim of Joseph L. Meek, famed and unlettered ‘mountain man,’ who arrived in 1840 after driving from Fort Hall to Walla in the first wagon on that part of the Oregon Trail. He was a founder of the Provisional Government; served as the first sheriff, the first marshal, the first census taker. He carried word of the Whitman Massacre to Washington D.C., where President Polk, whose wife was his cousin, received him. Named marshal under the New Territorial Government, he accompanied Governor Lane to Oregon. His final Indian fighting was as a soldier in the Yakima War, 1855-56. He died here in 1875. A neighbor called him: ‘very popular and as brave as Julius Caesar.’