7 Towns in Minnesota That Have The Best Main Streets
A lot of main streets start to blur together. These seven in Minnesota refuse to. They come with a yellow brick road, a Venetian gondola, and a shop that hand-sews moosehide boots. The yellow brick road is for Judy Garland, who was born there in 1922 and grew up to play Dorothy. The oldest of these downtowns is older than Minnesota itself. The first city-owned theater in the country still puts on shows here.
Ely
Sheridan Street is the kind of main drag where half the parked cars have a canoe on the roof. Iron mining built the town first. Piragis Northwoods takes up most of a block at Ely's only stoplight. It sells gear and canoes out of an 1890s storefront. Steger Mukluks turns out laced moosehide boots by hand. Wintergreen sews its parkas right in town. The Brandenburg Gallery hangs Jim Brandenburg's Northwoods photographs on the same block.
More than a dozen restaurants crowd the next few blocks. That is plenty for a town of about 3,300. The Boathouse Brewpub brews its own Blueberry Blonde beer. Front Porch Coffee handles the early shift for paddlers heading out at dawn.
Excelsior
Water Street rolls downhill to Lake Minnetonka. Its storefronts have been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2021. Leipold's Gifts and Antiques has been packed to the rafters since 1971. A shop cat is usually asleep on the counter. Excelsior Bay Books stacks new releases a few doors up.
The Rolling Stones rolled into the old Danceland ballroom here in 1964. Local lore credits Excelsior's Jimmy Hutmaker with the line behind "You Can't Always Get What You Want."
Fergus Falls
Lincoln Avenue cuts through downtown Fergus Falls. The marquee over the restored Fergus Theatre lights up the whole block. The theater opened back in 1921 and has a second life now as A Center for the Arts. It is the Otter Tail County seat on the river of the same name.
A statue of Otto the Otter holds court in Grotto Park. The name plays on Otter Tail County. Out on the edge of town looms the old state hospital. The giant Kirkbride-plan complex closed in 2005. The city owns the empty building now. Its grounds are open to the public.
Grand Rapids
The Old Central School holds shops and offices in downtown Grand Rapids now. The Richardsonian Romanesque building dates to 1895. A yellow brick road winds through the sidewalks around Pokegama Avenue. The town painted it for Judy Garland, born here in 1922. Grand Rapids celebrates her birthday every June with a Judy Garland Festival.
Grand Rapids took its name from 3.5 miles of rapids that once stopped steamboats on the Mississippi River. Dams drowned them long ago. The Judy Garland Museum fills her restored childhood home a few blocks off the main drag.
Henderson
Henderson's Main Street looks like someone hit pause around 1900. Twelve brick storefronts built between 1874 and 1905 make up a historic district that landed on the National Register in 1988. The 1879 Sibley County Courthouse does city-hall duty on Main Street now. Joseph R. Brown laid out the block in 1852.
Henderson has gone all in on its German roots with Sauerkraut Days every summer since 1930. A downtown mural and bench honor Prince. He rode his motorcycle through town and became a point of local pride after his death in 2016.
Red Wing
Red Wing put its name on a work boot. The downtown above the Mississippi predates the brand by decades. Its old buildings made Red Wing the first Minnesota town on the National Trust's Dozen Distinctive Destinations. The 1875 St. James Hotel still rents rooms above Main Street. The Sheldon Theatre down the block was the country's first city-owned theater.
The 1904 train depot by the river is the Red Wing Arts gallery now. Freight trains still rumble past the windows. Red Wing pottery still turns up in collections across the country.
Stillwater
Stillwater calls itself the birthplace of Minnesota. One of the oldest downtowns in the state lines the St. Croix on the Wisconsin border. The main drag packs in dozens of shops. One is stocked floor to ceiling with imported German Christmas ornaments. The riverfront restaurants put the water right outside the window.
A real Venetian gondola works the river from May into October. A fellow in a striped shirt rows it and takes the whole thing very seriously. The old Lift Bridge carries walkers and bikers into Wisconsin now.
Still Open For Business
Plenty of small-town main streets in Minnesota faded when the malls and big-box stores pulled business out to the highway. These held on. Henderson saved a full block of 1800s brick. Fergus Falls brought the Fergus Theatre back as a working arts center. Excelsior put its Water Street storefronts on the National Register in 2021. None of them froze into a museum. People still shop and eat on these blocks, the same way they have for generations.
