File:20150703 - 23 - St. Jacobs, Ont. - King Street North - "The Kitschification of Mennonite Culture".jpg

English: A view southward along King Street from the corner of Front Street in the center of St. Jacobs, Ontario, as seen on a July 2015 morning. The Old Order Mennonite presence in St. Jacobs and the surrounding area can be traced back to the 1830s and '40s, when a wave of Anabaptist immigrants from Pennsylvania arrived in what was heretofore a region thinly populated with a mix of English, Scottish, and non-Anabaptist German settlers. The enduring presence of this distinctive and charming culture has gone on to earn the community regional renown as a tourist destination, an economic sector that's been augmented since 1975 by the St. Jacobs Farmers' Market, where high-quality produce and handicrafts from the area, Mennonite-made and otherwise, are on offer. However, many local residents claim that St. Jacobs' unique Mennonite heritage is under threat from the forces of modern development, both due to the ever-increasing presence of visitors as well as the outward expansion of the suburban sprawl that rings the nearby twin cities of Kitchener and Waterloo. (Another of St. Jacobs' claims to fame is as the founding city of the Home Hardware chain of stores; the original location, opened in 1964 by local merchant Walter Hachborn, is seen in the background on the right-hand side of King Street.)