In central southwest Missouri, where the Western Prairie and the Ozark Plateau meet, Polk County was organized in 1835 and named for Congressman and later U.S. President James K. Polk. The county lies in the 1808 Osage Indian cession and was roamed by Delaware and other tribes into the period of settlement by Southern pioneers in the 1830s, and an Indian flint quarry site and a number of mounds remain there. Bolivar, the county seat, was laid out by William Jamieson in 1835; the largest town in the U.S. named for South American liberator Simon Bolivar, it received an equestrian statue and two portraits of him from the Venezuelan government, with the statue in Neuhart Park, and it is also the site of Dunnegan Memorial Park and, since 1879, Southwest Baptist Junior College. The Butterfield Overland Mail route ran through the county from 1858 to 1861, with Bolivar serving as a meal and relay stop, while another relay station stood near Brighton and the stage stopped in Brighton for a time after the telegraph reached there in 1859. The Frisco Railroad was built through the county in 1884. In this grain, livestock, poultry, and dairy area are the Pomme de Terre River, named by French trappers, and the Sac River, named for Sac Indians of northern Missouri; in 1957, construction began on a dam on the Pomme de Terre in adjacent Hickory County to form a flood control reservoir. Humansville, the county's second town, was settled by James Human in 1834 near Paxton Spring, which has a measured daily flow of 445,000 gallons. During the War Between the States, skirmishes occurred there in March 1862 and October 1863, and the county, divided in loyalty, was raided by guerrilla bands while Bolivar was occupied by troops of one side or the other during most of the war. Morrisville, laid out in 1870, was home to Morrisville, later Scarritt-Morrisville, Methodist College, which opened in 1872; other early schools included Polk Academy in 1840 and Dunnegan Springs Academy in 1895. Playwright and poet Zoe Akins was born in Humansville, and other noted Polk Countians included poet Clyde E. Tuck, writer William H. Hamby, writer and lawyer Marion C. Early, and writer and Missouri Secretary of State Charles U. Becker, who lived in Wishart.