South Dakota's western heritage is reflected here in architecture that draws on both Lakota and pioneer traditions. Eight skyward pillars merge in the framework of a tipi, the Plains Indian home, with one-by-one-and-one-half-foot concrete lodge poles rising fifty-six feet and weighing six-and-one-half tons each. The design reflects the spartan lifestyle of the nomadic Lakota (Sioux) Nation, and beneath each tipi, concrete isosceles triangles are arranged to form a thunderbird, another traditional Indian symbol. A nearby building is fashioned after the sod houses and dugouts that dotted the South Dakota prairie during pioneering days. The broad Cheyenne River country also became important cattle range, and in the early 1880's it supported large outfits with herds numbering tens of thousands, though ranches of comparable size no longer exist there. Nearby Wasta, on the west side of the Cheyenne, was founded in 1906-07 on the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad and named by South Dakota's first state historian, Doane Robinson, using the Sioux word for "good." Despite a 1914 fire that destroyed its business district, the town survived like many prairie communities. The Cheyenne River flows just west of here, and its two branches envelop the Black Hills and drain them into the Missouri River about 100 miles northeast.