The idea of “place” has interested Dave Engen for a long time.

A communications studies professor at Minnesota State University, Engen has a passion for collecting oral histories about Mankato and southern Minnesota as a whole. The recordings of residents’ memories can be heard at the Web site Voices of the Valley.

“Place is where people come together and form community,” he said.

As Engen was collecting the audio documentaries for the site, he found people kept talking about Front Street and what an important place it was to the Mankato community. In response, Engen began collecting memories about Front Street.

“It’s an ongoing project,” he said. “Front Street was thriving for about a hundred years, but many of the memories we’re getting are from the ’40s and ’50s, and into the ’60s.”

In the 1970s, Front Street was changed dramatically by urban renewal, Engen said. Mankato put a mall in the middle of the street, now called Mankato Place.

“The street, as people remember it, is simply not here anymore,” he said. “But the memories of Front Street are very much alive in this community.”

The aim of Engen’s project is to preserve those memories of Front Street.

Jessica Potter, director of the Blue Earth County Historical Society, heard the stories Engen had recorded about Front Street and got to thinking.

“One of the (historical) places I would like to go is the middle of Front Street when it was in its heyday, prior to urban renewal in the ’70s,” she said. “(I’d like to see) the Saulpaugh Hotel, which was a grand structure, and to be able to see all the businesses and the hustle and bustle of what that looked like in the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s, ’50s.”

In response to Potter’s dream of standing on the historical Front Street, and in response to the compelling stories Engen has collected, the Blue Earth County Historical Society decided to collaborate with Engen on an exhibit set to open at the Historical Society’s museum in 2011.

“The oral histories are so rich,” Potter said. “The idea came into my mind that we need to incorporate them into an exhibit. The exhibit will be on Front Street, but it will also cover the main streets of the other Blue Earth County towns.”

The Historical Society plans to ask Blue Earth County residents to contribute artifacts from Front Street to the exhibit as it begins to come together. The contributions could be anything: “Pictures or written accounts, a dress bought at Crazy Days at Brett’s Department Store — those will be the pieces that tie this exhibit together,” she said. “What would you use to tell your story without words? Would you use a matchbook, an old map, a menu?”

The multimedia exhibit will include voice recordings, photography and artifacts. Engen and Potter also plan to collaborate on a book, which they hope will be available for sale at the time of the exhibit.

In the meantime, residents can help assemble a historical record of Front Street by calling the Voices from the Valley recording line at 389-5537. Contributors are prompted to leave a message telling their Front Street stories and sharing their memories of historic Mankato.

“The Historical Society and I are hoping that we can get as many people as possible to share their stories about Front Street,” Engen said. “People who used to work on the street, people who owned businesses on the street, people who used to go down to the street as a kid.”



For more information, call the Blue Earth County Historical Society at 345-5566, or visit www.mnsu.edu/voices/.