Contributor: Winton and Cirena Lenz, Frances Stelter Source: Personal Collections

Downtown Main Street, "Jim Town," ca. 1903-1910

Main Street in Jim Town's business district looking north sometime after the construction of the bank in 1903 and 1910 (photo from Winton and Cirena Lenz). The hotel block and the grain elevator are on the right. The square-framed building on the far right was an ice house. The photograph was taken from the strip of "picture stamps" illustrated on the Fairwater page. Note how the street widens as it approaches the businesses.

A close-up of the photograph above shows the towers of the Free-Will Baptist Church in the background (look to the immediate left and right of the second telephone pole), as well as the boardwalk in front of the hotel. By 1914 when Charles Hins ran the hotel, then known as the Commercial House, the boardwalk had been replaced with a concrete walk.

The next photograph, from Frances Stelter, pictures the east side of Main Street and was taken at about the same time as the photo above.

In the foreground is a grocery owned and operated for much of the first half of the century by Dave Horn. The bank and the Tinkham Block stores stand between the grocery and the depot across Main Street from the grain elevator.