Prospectors named the area Eagle in 1836 after a huge bald eagle “hovering and curving over a large mound” east of here. The Village of Eagle was platted in 1851 with the coming of the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad by Kline, Pitman, and Sprague. At Eagle Center, business houses, schools, and a church quickly appeared. By 1880, Eagle ranked third in commercial importance in the county, with two drygoods stores, two clothing and tailor shops, two hardware stores, the Lins butcher shop, Bevins grocery and harness shop, a millinery shop, three saloons, a 15,000-bushel-capacity elevator and warehouse, Kline's Hotel, a three-story schoolhouse, and a Methodist Church. Its biggest sensation came in 1876 with the discovery of a 16-karat diamond in Tom Devdreaux' well. After many lawsuits, fake mines, and several years at Tiffany's in New York, the still-uncut stone was displayed at the American Museum of Natural History until 1964, when it was stolen and never recovered, and the hill here was renamed Diamond Hill. A surveyor's benchmark stands at the site of the first depot that gave birth to Eagle.