Reynolds County, near the geologic center of the Ozark Highland, was organized in 1845 and named for Missouri's seventh governor, Thomas Reynolds. Drained by the Black River, which early French trappers called L'eau Noire, the county lies in land claimed by the Osage Indians until 1808. Kentuckian Henry Fry was probably the first settler in 1812. Centerville, the second town to serve as county seat, stands on the West Fork of Black River, where 80 acres were acquired from John Buford for $100 in 1845; it replaced Lesterville as county seat after the courthouse there burned in 1867, and had a courthouse by 1872. During the Civil War, troops and guerrilla bands foraged the area. In southeast Reynolds County, Clearwater Lake, a flood control measure and popular resort area, was impounded by a dam on the Black River between 1940 and 1948. Near Lesterville, Johnson Shut-Ins State Park opened in 1956 on land donated by Joseph Desloge, and the scenic shut-ins, where the East Fork of Black River flows over some of Missouri's oldest exposed rock, were named for an earlier settler. A resort, lumbering, and livestock farming area, Reynolds County was once one of the state's leading timber producers, with about 85 percent of its virgin pine forests cut during the lumbering boom from the 1880s to the 1920s; in 1898, a peak year, about 92 million board feet were produced. Much of the county is now in Clark National Forest, established during the 1930s. The lumber industry brought the Mill Spgs., Current R., Barnesville (Mo. Southern) Railroad, built through west Reynolds County in 1884-86 and no longer operating. Ellington, founded in 1847 by Thomas Barnes, was a prominent lumber town and shipping center, and Ruble, Corridon, Reynolds, Garwood, and Bunker were other shipping stations; Redford, Black, Monterey, and Greeley were among other county communities. Near Lesterville at Proffit Mtn., with an altitude of 800 feet, the Taum Sauk power station was built from 1960 to 1963, using water pumped at night through a 7000-foot tunnel cut through solid granite to a reservoir atop the mountain, then released by day to generate power as it flowed to a reservoir at the foot of the mountain formed by damming the East Fork of Black River.