Beginning in the late 1860s, Fairview developed a one-street commercial district along the old territorial road running through the middle of town. In 1869 a Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution was started in Fairview. Other stores and businesses followed, so that by 1900 Fairview's downtown could boast of a public library, several general stores, a furniture store, a creamery, a harness shop, a butcher shop, and two hotels. In 1881 a Presbyterian mission school was funded, with a chapel being erected in 1894. A good public school system was established in the 1890s; 497 of Fairview's 1,800 population in 1898 were students. Recreational needs were accommodated in a social hall and the Eclipse Pavilion.

The arrival of the Rio Grande Western railroad in the 1890s bolstered Fairview's ability to import equipment and export its surplus goods, immensely benefiting the town's economic strength as it also did for other Sanpete cities. Fairview's fortunes rose and fell with the cycle of the regional economy after the railroad-enhanced boom and its population high-water mark in 1900, however.