Decatur, IL (WAND) – Two decades after bringing the first Farm Progress Show to Progress City, the area prepares for the 11th show on its grounds.

In 2004, the City of Decatur and many others won the rights to bring the show to the community biannually.

“Decatur is in the middle of what we call the three I-s: Indiana, Illinois and Iowa,” said Rick Wild, the On-site Operations Manager for the show. “We picked Decatur because of the proximity to Iowa, and it just seemed to work out from the other shows and the farms we used to go into.”

Decatur Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe was working with the Chamber of Commerce at the time. She remembers going to the first show in 2005 and shows before then.

“If you go back in time,” Wolfe said, “Farm Progress used to be held on a farm. There weren’t permanent bathrooms, there weren’t paved roads, and sometimes it was a muddy mess. It didn’t start out quite this big or quite this grandiose, but people love our bathrooms, they love our roads, it’s a big deal.”

Every time the show returns to Progress City, the technology and crowds get bigger and better.

“The biggest thing is the technology and the tractors. The amount of people that come here, the different changes that we’ve done on the show site,” Wild said. “So, in 2015, when I came aboard, this was just the show site, just as you see it now, other than the South expansion, we ended up having three streets in the south, just to get more people in and to cover what we had for exhibitors.”

Wolfe said seeing the grounds go from an idea to what it is today has been special to watch.

“A long, long time ago, going back many decades, we were happy just to be finalists for something this big. And now we’re not. Now we want to win,” Wolfe said. “And we won Farm Progress 20 years ago. We’re excited that they saw the investment this community made and how important it is to us, because this is home every other year.”