About 7 miles (11 km) north of Cambridge, the Medicine Creek Dam impounds the Harry Strunk reservoir, 1,850 acres (750 ha) in area and primarily created for flood-control.

Precipitation is highly variable but averages 50 cm (20 in) per year which is the minimum required for unirrigated agriculture in the Great Plains.

"Medicine" as a name applied to geographic features is fairly common in the western United States for places associated with Native Americans (Indians).

Medicine Creek was a well-watered and wooded corridor between the Republican and Platte Rivers dating from pre-historic times.

Findings include fossils of extinct mammoths, evidence of Clovis Culture and pre-Clovis Paleo-Indians, and many sites associated with the prehistoric Plains Village period from roughly 1000 to 1450 CE.