BEYOND THE MARGIN By Joe Spear
Inheriting a remarkable history W
ar heroes, captains of industry, builders and thought leaders are woven into the fabric that is the remarkable history of Mankato. It’s an intriguing story when one considers the big things that came from a small town on the Minnesota River. It’s a story of a culture that evolved from agrarian to industry to become a regional center for education, medicine and political forces. It has become the place of a stunning reconciliation of cultures of the Native American community and the white settlers — a relationship that did not start well with the largest mass execution in U.S. history on Dec. 26, 1862, at the culmination of the U.S.-Dakota War. Mankato people rank high in civic engagement
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and education — accumulating wealth, both real and cultural, as early as the 1900s. Why else would the writer and American critic Sinclair Lewis find Mankato an appropriate place to pen some of his most scathing criticism? Mankato was not the model for the Lewis critique of small-town life and how restricting it was for his educated heroine Carol Kennicott in “Main Street.” That dubious distinction was left for his hometown of Sauk Centre. Lewis spent the summer of 1919 writing “Main Street” in Mankato and historical accounts show him to be “boozily” attending parties, taking drives and speaking at the college. He said he enjoyed
