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I live in Farmington, Missouri. I grew up in St Louis, also Jefferson County (between the two), N St Louis, etc. I know the area fairly well. No hesitation saying that.
Farmington is nice. Incredibly nice.
Where am I going to go with this? I don't know.
I thought of St Louis (it's once booming commercial districts, crowded streets, full parking lots) and Jefferson County (less businesses, more rural (like Farmington present day), but peaceful. And how now, St Louis (South County, North County) are storefronts, lease signs in the window. The city, less crime than in the 80s/90s, more businesses, but highs and lows throughout.
And then Farmington. I've been in this town for 1.5 years. I have yet to see an empty storefront. Of MANY storefronts. Much denser than South County or Northern Jefferson County. Difference being small "lawns" (or even fields) alongside storefronts. Spacious.
The big box stores were always the canary in the coal mine in STL. In fact, they were the boards on the mine entrance. Those go, most businesses smaller do. JC Penny was the marker for that. The last of the big box outlets to have a presence in STL.
In Farmington, one can hardly get through the JC Penny parking lot without dodging cars. "Holdouts" in town, too - A&W Root Beer, Steak n' Shake, businesses that once had large chains in STL, which I thought (and in many ways did) go out of business, still have a presence in Farmington.
There are reasons (for Farmington, I won't touch STL politics/economy) and I think it is two things:
A) if someone in ALL of St Francois County wants to go to a restaurant, a store, whatever, they pretty much have to come to Farmington. The other towns are much smaller, very much so. So the entire "chunk" of SE Missouri comes to/goes from a dense town (Farmington)
B) when going down Highway 67, looking at a data coverage map, the highway and few towns alongside have great coverage. The rest of the county has near no coverage. And is mostly protected national forests, anyway. So less online shopping in those area. They can come into town and hop on wifi, or just go to the store and buy the item there.
It's a lovely town. I am happy here. Just a lurvletter for it :)
You word paint a nice picture!
FWIW, I see I-55 and I-57 run down that way, and it just so happens I was on *both* - albeit much farther north - for a while yesterday. :-)