DATELINE— TUMWATER, WA
Supporters of the Davis Meeker oak and Cowlitz Tribe elders are gathering at the oak tree at 1 p.m. on Sunday, October 27, to walk 2.7 miles on the path of the Cowlitz Trail/Oregon Trail. The walk ends next to a possible grave mound in a forest where one of the last known unpaved remnants of the Cowlitz Trail crosses through.
The walk will pass by the old homestead of Tumwater pioneers George and Isabella Bush. George and Isabella and their five sons were among the first settlers to come to the south Puget Sound region after journeying on the Oregon Trail from Missouri. Bush was a wealthy educated farmer in Missouri, but as a free African American in a slave state, he and his German American wife faced increasing discrimination and decided to move west.
At the end of the walk on Sunday, attendees can expect food and a fire in the fire pit and are encouraged to bring camp chairs. The chairs will be ferried to the end while people are doing the walk.
The Davis Meeker oak has been a trail marker on the Cowlitz Trail for hundreds of years. The trail is a traditional trading route that later became a spur of the Oregon Trail. There are very few places where the Cowlitz Trail remains unpaved, and so this is a special opportunity to see one of those places.
It is adjacent to another parcel with an unpaved segment of the trail that developers are seeking to pave over and build over 200 apartments, a grocery store, storage facilities, a YMCA, and more. Both parcels were purchased 11 years after Chief Leschi was executed, and the buyer was the sheriff’s deputy who kicked the pin from the trap door on the gallows. The parcels are in the traditional lands of the Nisqually Tribe.
Meanwhile, attorneys for the citizen group that is fighting to save the oak tree from the mayor’s plan to remove it have been busy lately with cross-motions in the Court of Appeals. The group is accepting tax deductible donations for attorney fees on its website.
The Davis Meeker Garry Oak is located at 7527 Old Highway 99, Tumwater, Washington.
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Map created by Ronda Larson Kramer using February 11, 1854 survey plat map of Township 17N Range 2W, from the General Land Office Records from the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management.
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