Simpson County lies in the Gulf Coastal Plain within the Pearl River watershed and has many rivers, streams, and springs, including McNair Springs, which with Saratoga Springs feeds Okatoma Creek, a regional recreational waterway whose name is traditionally attributed to Choctaw words meaning "radiant water." McNair Springs and its waterways are central to the history of Magee, whose beginnings date to 1840, when Willie Magee built his gristmill on Little Goodwater Creek. In the early 1900s, the Gulf and Ship Island Railroad built a hotel at the springs with its own water works and spring-fed pools, and a bottled water manufacturing plant was also built around the same time. When the Sanatorium was built, McNair Springs supplied drinking water to it and to the town of Magee. Today the springs are the center of a city park and, though no longer supplying drinking water to the Sanatorium or Magee, still produce approximately 400 gallons of clear spring water per minute. In earlier days Simpson County's waterways served as highways, and its only river town was Osceola on the Pearl River, founded at the bluffs about a mile south of the present Rockport bridge and named for the Indian chief Osceola. Its first store opened in 1830, it was then the head of boat navigation, and the first line of steamboats was owned and operated by Captain Poitevent, known along the river as "Captain Potervine," who later extended navigation as far as Georgetown. During the Civil War, steamboat navigation was almost abandoned because trees were cut into the river to prevent federal gunboats from ascending it, dealing Osceola a death blow and leaving it practically abandoned by the close of the war.