The vast prairie surrounding this site is typical of the Bluestem pasture region, more commonly known as the Flint Hills, an area named for its predominant grasses that extends from Oklahoma almost to Nebraska in a narrow oval two counties wide and covers some four and a half million acres. These pastures comprise the last large segment of true prairie that once stretched from the forests of the East to the Great Plains. Today almost a million head of cattle are fattened each year on these nutritious grazing lands, and the area normally receives more cattle annually from the Southwest than all Kansas did during an average season in the era of the Texas drives from 1866 to 1885, when herds were driven north to Kansas railheads. In the hills 14 miles southwest, Knute Rockne, the famed Notre Dame football coach, was killed in an airplane crash on March 31, 1931.