Main Street

Main Street. . , Nearly every small town has a Main Street - - a town center where residents gather to conduct their business, greet their neighbors, and exchange news of the day. , Today the concept of main street is suffused in a nostalgic glow, as we remember the virtues and simplicity of small-town life. But it wasn’t always so. The publication of Sinclair Lewis’s novel Main Street in 1920 jolted Americans out of their sentimental view of their hometowns. , Lewis, a native of Sauk Centre, set his novel in the fictional town of Gopher Prairie, whose residents he depicted in an unflattering light. Soon the term “Main Street” took on a negative meaning, becoming synonymous with narrow-minded, small-town provincialism. , Although Lewis intended Gopher Prairie to represent the American village in general, it quickly came to be associated with his own hometown of Sauk Centre. The local newspaper expressed its displeasure by waiting six months before acknowledging any connection to the nation’s most talked-about novel. As the book gained popularity, however, Sauk Centre came to appreciate its celebrity status. , Gradually the phrase “Main Street” lost its negative meaning as American film makers and writers in the 1930s and 1940s returned to the glorification of small-town virtues. Sauk Centre’s association with Lewis’s novel, which had at first brought ridicule, eventually conferred on the town a special dignity. , Now Sauk Centre’s Main Street stands as the living symbol of the American small town. In 1994, to recognize its importance in our cultural history, this Main Street was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, the nation’s official list of properties worthy of preservation.