This was a stage coach stop between Chicago and Milwaukee and was a stopover for farmers from the west traveling to Little Fort (now known as Waukegan) to barter their crops for supplies and to ship out from the ports. Just east of the bridge, at the junction of Milwaukee Road and Grand Avenue, was the Mutaw Tavern, earlier known as "Marm Rudd's Tavern" and more recently as the Mother Rudd House. Gurnee, the 14th Mayor of Chicago and one of the directors of the train route. The village was named along with the train-station that was built there.
Stage coaches ran on this route as late as 1870. The east-west road, now known as Grand Avenue, was a main route from McHenry County to the port of Waukegan. This road was "laid out" in 1836 by three early settlers, Thomas McClure, Mark Noble, and Richard Steele. It was at this junction that the Milwaukee Road crossed the river from west to east and then continued in a northeasterly direction to eventually join Chicago to Milwaukee. With the erection of a permanent bridge, roads were established and this area became the hub of the township. Later a stationary wooden bridge was constructed, and still later an iron bridge was erected. A floating log bridge was built there in about 1842. Near the Community House there was a ford used by the Potowatomi Indians for crossing the river. In 1835-36, a land company from New York State erected a Community House (site of the old Gurnee Grade School) to accommodate families while they were locating and getting government land grants to their farms. The first settlement of Warren Township commenced in 1835 in the vicinity of the Aux Plaines River (now the Des Plaines River). Warren Township, formed in 1850, was also named after him. They came from the town of Warren, New York, which was named in honor of Major General Joseph Warren, killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Early settlers in the Gurnee area came by foot horseback and by "Prairie Schooners" drawn by oxen or via the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes.
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