Eden Prairie

History

Eden Prairie's farming community grew slowly over the years. For most of its existence, Eden Prairie was a slow-growing, pastoral village on the far southwest fringes of the Twin Cities. Between 1880 and 1960, Eden Prairie's population only grew from about 739 to 2,000. Flying Cloud Airport was the first sign of big development in 1946. The 1960s and 1970s were decades of growth for the city's parks and recreation system. In the mid-1970s, the community gained a higher profile with the addition of Interstate Highway 494 and the Eden Prairie Center mall. Eden Prairie became a village in 1962 and a statutory city in 1974. One of Eden Prairie's popular lakes, Staring Lake, is named for Jonas Platt Staring (1809–1894), who built the first house by the lake.