Driving into downtown Wanamingo along Minnesota State Highway 57 on a recent Saturday afternoon.
ON THE CITY WEBSITE, Wanamingo is described as a classic small Midwestern town in Southeastern Minnesota. That seems accurate.
What then is a classic small Midwestern town?
Visiting early on a Saturday afternoon in downtown Wanamingo.
It is a place where, on a Saturday afternoon in March, two guys lean on the back of a pick-up truck and converse outside a bar and grill.
Posted at a local park. I edited the phone number from the photo.
It’s a place where a notice in the park information center requests help in finding Belle, a missing Siamese cat.
Walking the puppy downtown. Wanamingo still has an old style water tower.
It’s a place where a friendly young couple walks their curly-haired puppy, allows a visitor to pet him and then wishes the out-of-towner a good afternoon.
It’s a place with solid brick buildings in a downtown occupied by businesses like a meat market, a bar, a cafe, a garage, law and insurance offices, and grain bins banking the north end of Main Street.
I love the classic corner angled gas station.
Wanamingo has that small town rural feel, that sense of life moving at a slower pace. Traffic is minimal downtown, even though Minnesota State Highway 57 doubles as Main Street. And, yes, the main street is named Main Street.
In this classic small Midwestern town, kids drop bikes in yards.
I’ll take you inside Trinity Lutheran Church in an upcoming post.
A life-long resident tinkers with a light post outside Trinity Lutheran, a stalwart brick corner church that holds the histories of so many local families. Births, marriages, deaths.
Wanamingo, platted in 1904, is not Utopia. No place is. But it is a community of about 1,100 that seems, from outward appearances, to care, to want to look its best, to be the kind of place folks want to visit or call home. It is a classic small Midwestern town.
FYI: Check back tomorrow for the second post in my “from Wanamingo” series. I’ll take you inside the Area 57 Coffee Cafe.
© Copyright 2016 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
I especially love the opening pic and the Amoco station one..
Thank you, Jake. I’ll be posting many more images from Wanamingo in my six-part series.
[…] small towns: Part I From Wanamingo, A Classic Small Town In Minnesota (Minnesota Prairie […]
You nailed it! Love your definition of a small town classic midwestern town. Great visual images with this sentence…
It’s a place with solid brick buildings in a downtown occupied by businesses like a meat market, a bar, a cafe, a garage, law and insurance offices, and grain bins banking the north end of Main Street.
Thank you, Sue. Lots more to come from Wanamingo.
I like the photo of the guys talking while leaning against the truck. Easy conversation is the thing I think of first when I think of small towns.
That’s probably my favorite photo from Wanamingo. They stood there talking for a long time. I was waiting for them to ask me who I was and why I was taking their picture. But they didn’t. If I would have walked into the bar and grill, I’m pretty certain heads would have swiveled.
Okay, Audrey, I want those bar and grill photos and stories next time!
Randy would approve of that request to patronize the bar and grill. Watch for tomorrow’s post for insight on that topic.
Sounds like a great place. Can’t wait to see inside the church. I attended a Trinity Lutheran Church as a child and now I belong to a Saint Peder’s Lutheran Church.
I currently attend a Trinity Lutheran. It seems an especially popular name among Lutheran churches. I love the spelling of yours of Saint Peder’s.
Peder is the name of my Grandfather’s Grandfather who immigrated to SD from Norway in 1881.
Even better, to have that personal name connection to your church.
You just cant beat the feeling you get from a small town. You got in the church???? Lucky you!
Yup, lucky me. I also got inside Holden Lutheran in rural Kenyon. I’ll take you there eventually also. I get pretty excited when I find a church door open.
It makes me giddy with excitement….cant wait!
You are too funny, my friend.
Not a stoplight in sight so I could be very happy living there!
The picture of the bike in yard is so classic of small town America, love it!
No stoplights, so, yes, Don, Wanamingo would fit your needs.
I agree about the bike dropped in the yard.