Medicine Creek flows just north of here through the center of Lyman County and empties into the Missouri River 27 miles to the northeast. In this part of central South Dakota, place-names reflect early state history: Medicine Creek was named for a butte in eastern Lyman County reputed to be the site of Indian ceremonials. Lyman County took its name from Major W.F. Lyman, a member of the 1873 Territorial Legislature that created the county, though he never lived in the area. Nearby county and community names also reflect territorial politics and plains expeditions: Hughes County was named for another territorial legislator, Mellette County for the last territorial and first South Dakota governor, Stanley and Sully Counties for army generals of the pioneer era, and Jones County after the Iowa home county of its settlers. Railroads also shaped the region's names, as the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul line followed a westward route across South Dakota that generally paralleled what is now Interstate 90, and towns that sprang up along it often bore railroad names, including Vivian, named for the wife of a Milwaukee railroad representative, and Draper, one of the few towns in America named for a railroad conductor. To the northwest, an approximate 20-by-20 mile area of the Fort Pierre National Grassland preserves the side-open look of the original Dakota prairie. Thirty-five miles north, Fort Pierre and Pierre recall the fur traders who preceded settlement along the Missouri, taking their names from Pierre Chouteau, Jr., an agent of the American Fur Company in the 1830s. Fort Pierre, on the west bank of the Missouri, has been a continuously occupied site since 1817, first as a fort or fur post and later as a shipping center and cattle town, while Pierre, the state capital on the east bank, was founded in 1880 when Chicago and Northwestern Railroad tracks reached the river.