Skip to main content

Endangered Species

March 2023
1min read

Remembering Main Street
An American Album

by Pat Ross, Viking, 230 pages, $29.95 . CODE: PEN-5

It is a staple of the evening news that the American small town and its classic main street are vanishing, victims of population shifts, malls, and superstores. The travel writer Pat Ross has chosen to study ten places where Main Street still thrives. She begins by revisiting her own hometown of Chestertown, Maryland. Now as ever, activity stops for each sailboat that passes through the drawbridge there, and Stam’s drugstore still serves a superior milkshake. In Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Ken Weeks’s father, Robert, started Weeks’s Barber Shop in 1905 and brought his son into the business in 1940; Ken Weeks still won’t allow a phone in the place. In Sheridan, Wyoming, Ross met Dan George, owner of Dan’s Western Wear, who could remember when his Main Street contained signs reading, NO INDIANS ALLOWED . Despite this, George told Ross, “Sheridan hasn’t changed that much.”

The towns range in population from fifteen hundred to fifteen thousand. Ross credits their endurance partly to signage restrictions and strong chambers of commerce, but those seem to be after-the-fact explanations. Read this as a series of photo-essay visits to some enviable American places, if not as a recipe for reviving others.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "December 1994"

Authored by: Gene Smith

Forty years changed almost everything—but not the author’s gleaming, troubling memories of Miss Clark. So he went looking for her.

An Interview with the President and the First Lady

Authored by: The Editors

Manhole Covers

Authored by: The Editors

Something Permanent

Authored by: The Editors

The Kingdom of Matthias
A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th Century America

Authored by: The Editors

Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union

Authored by: The Editors

Apples

Authored by: The Editors

Watch the Skies!
A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth

Authored by: The Editors

Code Name: The Long Sobbing
The Allies, the Axis, and the Victims: An Anthology From D-Day to V-E Day

Authored by: The Editors

Froth & Scum
Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and the Ax Murder in America’s First Mass Medium

Featured Articles

The world’s most prominent actress risked her career by standing up to one of Hollywood’s mega-studios, proving that behind the beauty was also a very savvy businesswoman. 

Rarely has the full story been told about how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.