In the time before automobiles and trains, rural areas developed a network that extended out of a regional city center. Like a root system of a tree, little roads connected small rural towns to the network that allowed trade and commerce to flourish. However, unlike today, people in the rural network rarely went to the regional city to engage in trade. Instead, they would go to the closest town that had a weekly or bi-weekly market to sell their goods and pick up needed items to take home. For farmers, market towns were a weekly ritual where they sold goods to locals, as well as traveling merchants from the regional city. The automobile and extensive highway systems built since World War II made market towns…
