plat of Section 9, all became joined to create the present-day village after the death of Levi Arnolds in 1845. Walkers' Grove flourished because of the DuPage River and established routes to Fort Dearborn in Chicago, as well as to Ottawa to the west. Reuben Flagg hauled lumber from Walker's mill to Chicago in order to erect the first two frame structures in the city (the P.F.W. Peck House and the George Dole Forwarding House). Chicago also depended upon the settlement for mail and supplies. The community's early prosperity was stunted when the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848, because the village was not located along the canal. Located within the village are numerous Greek Revival, Upright and Wing cottages, a school built in 1847, and a number of early-19th-century homes. Plainfield currently has three buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places: Plainfield Halfway House, Flanders House, and a 1928 Standard Oil gas station. Plainfield abolitionists offered food and shelter to runaway slaves following the Underground Railroad. North Central College was founded in the village in 1861 as Plainfield College. The Plainfield Public Library District was founded in the village in 1925 as the Nimmons Village of Plainfield Free Public Library. Plainfield is the birthplace of Eddie Gardner, one of the pilots credited with establishing the transcontinental air mail routes for the United States Postal Service. The earliest architects associated with buildings in Plainfield are J.E. Minott of Aurora; G. Julian Barnes & John H. Barnes of Joliet; and Herbert Cowell of Joliet and Plainfield. On August 28, 1990, an F5 tornado ran its course through Plainfield. The "Plainfield Tornado" killed 29 people, 24 of whom were killed instantly, and 350 were injured. More than 1,100 homes were damaged and destroyed. The tornado made it across more than in only 8 minutes. It destroyed the only Plainfield high school at the time, now called Plainfield Central High School. A population boom started to take place at the end of the 20th century after the tornado, with a large number of new home subdivisions. Before this, Plainfield was primarily an agricultural town. Certain older parts of Plainfield once suffered from extreme traffic congestion. Before Interstate 55 was built just east of the village in the late 1950s, U.S. Route 30 (the Lincoln Highway) and U.S. Route 66 (sometimes referred to as "The Mother Road") merged into one street