- Business - Janesville Sesquicentennial
-
- City lured shoppers in the 1800s
- Today, Janesville is considered a regional shopping city
largely on the strength of The Janesville
- Mall, but its reputation as THE place to shop dates back
to the city's earliest days.
- Recapping the city's first 25 years in his 1908 history of
Rock County, William Fiske BROWN
- writes:
- "With the milling faculties which Janesville enjoyed...
it drew custom (work) from a very large
- section of the country. As will be remembered on the opening
of the Big Mill, farmers brought their grist from as far north
as Portage, and while this tributary country decreased as railroads
and stage lines increased, nevertheless, people for many miles
around still continued to bring their grain to Janesville and
buy their provisions here.
- "The stores of Janesville had been noted for their facilities
ever since they started. I have been told
- by those acquainted with the facts that persons teaming from
this section north to the pineries would drive right through
Madison to Janesville in order to buy their supplies here rather
than in Madison; also, that in the early days, before the railroad
was built to Monroe, farmers and other residents of Green County
would come to buy their lumber here from as far west as Monroe.
- "This supremacy of the Janesville stores has continued
to the present time. As to the dry goods and
- furniture stores of Janesville, they are yet known to have
the largest stocks of any outside Milwaukee, and they draw trade
from all the surrounding cities and villages."
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