Main Street long served as the center of small-town life, where residents conducted business, greeted neighbors, and exchanged news, but its meaning changed after Sinclair Lewis published Main Street in 1920. A native of Sauk Centre, Lewis set the novel in the fictional town of Gopher Prairie and portrayed its residents in an unflattering light, helping make “Main Street” synonymous with narrow-minded small-town provincialism. Although he meant Gopher Prairie to represent the American village generally, people quickly linked it to Sauk Centre, whose local newspaper waited six months before acknowledging any connection to the widely discussed book. As the novel’s popularity grew, Sauk Centre gradually embraced its celebrity, and in the 1930s and 1940s filmmakers and writers helped restore Main Street as a positive symbol by glorifying small-town virtues. What first brought ridicule eventually gave Sauk Centre a special dignity, and its Main Street came to stand as a living symbol of the American small town; in 1994 it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
