What has been called America's original Main Street lies just 20 miles north in Sauk Centre, Minnesota.

Gopher Prairie was the name Sinclair Lewis gave to his fictional town in the 1920 novel "Main Street." He described its principal thoroughfare: "Main Street is the climax of civilization. It was not only the uninspiring, unapologetic ugliness and the rigid straightness which overwhelmed her. It was the planlessness, the flimsy temporariness of the buildings... Each man had built with the most valiant disregard of all the others." In his novel, Lewis disclaimed having used the Main Street in his hometown as the prototype. The Main Street in his book, he insisted, "is the continuation of Main Streets everywhere. The story would be the same in Ohio or Montana, in Kansas or Kentucky or Illinois..."

Nevertheless, Gopher Prairie in Lewis's sensational Main Street was based on Sauk Centre, situated 105 mi. northwest of Minneapolis off Interstate 94. (20 miles north of New London.) A stroll down the real Main Street today reveals oversized street signs reading, "Original Main Street," and a huge banner hangs between the Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck stores reading, "Visit the Sinclair Lewis Boyhood Home and Museum." While Sauk Centre takes a masochistic pride in Lewis's book, a recent survey proved few of the residents had ever read any of the author's books. Still, the high school band is called "The Main Streeters."