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Remembering Main Street
Some remember Main Street as a bustling city street that drew all of Stockton to its unique stores and important businesses. Often photographed and the subject of vintage postcards, Main Street was at one time the heart of Stockton’s downtown area.
The city’s earliest businesses were clustered around the waterfront, a convenient location for trade and transportation to the southern gold mines. By 1851, the area had been plagued by a series of floods and fires and businesses started migrating towards the Courthouse Plaza and Main Street.
The early buildings on Main Street were wooden framed and included grocery and provision stores, saddle and harness shops, as well as hardware and machinery merchants. Horse drawn carts and buggies traveled the unpaved road while pedestrians used the wooden sidewalks. By the turn of the century, Stockton had grown into an industrial city. Streetcars running down Main Street and the presence of banks, hotels, and theatres, attracted a steady flow of visitors.
By the 1930’s, Main Street boasted several skyscrapers and became the center of Stockton’s leading shops and prominent businesses. The pioneer stores were replaced by larger retail stores, including the Owl Drug Store, J.C. Penney’s, Woolworth’s. Nevertheless, many specialty shops and small businesses remained. Main Street continued as the hub of commercial activity for the city.
During the 1960’s, Main Street was made into a one-way street in an effort to improve the flow of traffic downtown. The west end of Main Street closed with the building of the fountain on Hunter Square Plaza. The substantial residential and commercial growth north of the Calaveras River contributed to the decline of Main Street and downtown.
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