So tell me about, so Main Streets, as such, really, really came into being, I mean, farmers had to have a place to come, to go, because obviously they just couldn't get their displies, there were no Amazon trucks coming out to farms back in the day.

- [John] True.

- So they had Main Streets, but how did they come into their heyday?

- Well, a little bit of it was westward movement yet.

Some of it was immigration, but the population was growing.

We'd gotten the Civil War behind us.

And 1830s was a really popular era for Illinois towns getting started.

But if you want to say what was average, that's when I get into that area between the Civil War and World War I, which the heyday.

As I tell people, for immigrants in those days, it was a great thing.

If you were, say, an Italian cobbler back in Italy, there may have been 50 other people who could do that.

- Right.

- Nobody's gonna make a dime.

But if you can get into this new... - New world.

- Territory, yeah, new world, new territory, new state, new towns opening up, you might be the only person within 50 miles with that skill and you're gonna make some money.

- Right.