Maries County in the central Ozarks of Missouri was organized in 1855 and named for the Big and Little Maries rivers. The area, in territory ceded by Osage Indians in 1808, was roamed by French trappers who early named the Gasconade, Bourbeuse, and Maries rivers. Pioneers from the South and other parts of Missouri came in the 1820s, and the 1850s brought a large German immigration and a number of Irish. Vienna, the county seat, was laid out on the watershed divide between the Osage and Gasconade in 1855 by Reuben Terrill on 70 acres donated by William Shockley, and the town is said to have been named as a compromise after county Judge V.G. Latham wanted it called "Vie Anna" in memory of a relative. The county's third courthouse was built in 1943, and Vienna is also home to the Old Jail and Felker Log House Museums of pioneer relics. The gable-roofed limestone jail was built in 1858 by a Mr. Barnhart at a cost of $2,500, and the Felker Log House, built in 1855 by John Felker, a native of Hanover, Germany, was moved near the jail in 1959. Encompassing 526 square miles of wooded hills, fertile valleys, and tableland prairies, Maries County lies in a general farming area. In the Civil War the county saw little action, though Vienna was occupied as a minor Union post. After the war, lead was mined briefly in the 1870s and zinc in the 1880s. Belle, the county's largest town, grew up along the route of the Chicago, Rock Is., & Pac. R.R., built through a small portion of north Maries County in 1904. Other communities include High Gate, Safe, Hayden, Brinktown, and Vichy, which was laid out in 1880 near a mineral spring that was an early noted health spa. Prehistoric Indian mounds and artifacts have been found along the county's rivers, and an ancient Indian trail later became a road between St. Louis and Springfield. In the 1820s, Shawnee and Delaware Indians had a village at Indian Ford on the Gasconade River. An Indian pictograph of a deer remains on a bluff above the Gasconade near Paydown Spring, whose measured 11,600,000 gallons daily flow from several gravel beds made it the site of early grist mills and a woolen mill.