Between 1880 and 1920, nearly 24 million immigrants arrived in the United States, many finding work in the mines, mills, and factories of a rapidly expanding industrial sector. In 1913, the American Zinc, Lead and Smelting Company established an ore processing plant outside East St. Louis near rail lines south of the National Road, drawing workers from Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Mexico, Spain, and other nations to St. Clair County. They were among the first residents of the newly chartered village of Fairmont City, where immigrants and their families built a vibrant, culturally diverse community from many backgrounds, languages, and beliefs. Immigrants also formed social clubs to preserve their culture, language, and traditions, and the Mexican American Society of Fairmont City held fiestas and celebrated Mexican holidays at the Mexican Hall on the National Road, with dance music provided by the band Honorifica. Fairmont City's zinc plant became its anchor industry, and in 1941 resident Dan Clotfelter, Jr., cashed his first paycheck from American Zinc at Kokotovich's Tavern. Local businesses reflected both immigrant enterprise and highway traffic: from 1925 to 1978, Carril's Market served residents with meats, breads, canned goods, and groceries after Manual Carril, who had followed the zinc industry from Spain to Cherryvale, Kansas, and then to Fairmont City, opened the store; and in the early 1950s, the Nite Spot Café, owned by Adam and Anne Galas, served tourists and truckers around the clock, employed 14 waitresses and three full-time cooks, sold gifts and sundries, and even let truck drivers order a Lionel train set for pickup on a later trip. Fairmont City also stood along the National Road, authorized in 1806 when President Thomas Jefferson signed legislation for federal funding of the route surveyed from Cumberland, Maryland, to the Mississippi River as a highway for pioneers settling the West. In Illinois, the National Road survives today as U.S. 40, spanning 164 miles, and Fairmont City also lay on Route 66; roadside businesses such as Thomas Garage, built in 1931, prospered during the heyday of these cross-country highways.