Eden Prairie's town board held its first meeting in a log schoolhouse on May 11, 1858, the same day Minnesota became a state. Eden Prairie's farming community grew slowly over the years. 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 Shopping Center. Eden Prairie became a village in 1962, and a statutory city in 1974. A popular lake in Eden Prairie is Staring Lake, named for Jonas Platt Staring (1809-1894), who built the first house by the lake.