REMEMBER WHEN FROM THE PAST--REMEMBERING DOWNTOWN MAIN STREET

REMEMBER WHEN
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Kenna Holm

Main Street looking North from 100 South

REMEMBERING DOWNTOWN MAIN STREET

      Remember the days of the two-way street through the middle of town? Oh those were the days.  I'm sure many people who are new to the area can't imagine cars going both ways. Myself, I wish it was still that way.
      I don't usually go way, way back to the beginning but this week I want  to show a picture of Payson Main Street when it was first done in the 1890s ( a little before my time).
      I think in the beginning, Main Streetwas supposed to be where First East is now. At that time, they made that street the widest in the community. But then the merchants built their shops one block west on what is known as Main Street today.  Soon after that the city fathers had to move Main Street one block west which kind of upset the original plans of the settlers. As a result, Main Street was set up on one of the city's narrowest streets and this brought  a lot  of problems with cars becoming popular.

Tearing out sidewalk to make Main Street Wider. This was in front of Central Market. Look at the prices of groceries advertised on window

     Now- to when I remember, in 1947, the city decided they needed to make Main Street a little wider. The city was starting to prepare for the Centennial Celebration so they wanted to make Payson look as good as possible.  They declared theweek of Apr 7th to the 12th as clean up week and wanted the whole city to do what they could to make the city look beautiful.
      The Mayor at that time was Floyd Harmer and he and the city council decided it was time to widen Payson Main Street. They  decided to make the sidewalk on the East side of Main Street the same as the West side. So in April of 1947 they started tearing out the sidewalk on the East side of Main Street. They made the street four feet wider. They thought now the cars wouldn't abouttouch each other as they drove by one another on Main Street.
      It's fun to look back and remember the stores that were on Main Street at that time.
There was the old Elite Café, J. C. Penney's , Dastrup’s and so on. They had water that would run down the sides of the street on each side.  It was irrigation water. They also had a couple of water
fountains on Main Street.

   This is in 1973 when they started the Downtown Improvement

Two way traffic on Main Street in the 1960s 

  We used to 'drag' Main’ when we were in high school and thought  that  was pretty cool.
Then in early 1970s, they decided they needed to spruce up Main Street and give it a whole different look. They took the ditches out and replaced them with underground pipe, they tore out the sidewalks (again) and started with the 'New Look'.  They decided to make Main Street a one way street. Now that took a lot of getting used to by the people in town. (Hard to teach an old dog new tricks). There were a lot of people that would start going north on Main Street and suddenly realize they were going the wrong way.
      They put in new sidewalks, planted trees, made areas for flowers and it looked beautiful but it did take some getting  used to only  go one way on Main.


I  miss the days when you could start on one end of Main and do all your  shopping. They  had grocery stores on both ends, Central Market  and Safeway's. They  had Wilson's Style Shop for  women's  wear and Sherm's Men's Apparel for the men. They had Forsey's Variety Store for just about everything you would need, they had Roe's Bakery for the most wonderful baked goods, there was J. C. Penneys, and Christensen's, Gudmundson's Jewelry Store and of course they had a couple of Pool Halls, the barber shops and drug stores and a few other places. I miss those good old days when you went up town shopping and you got to visit with everyone you knew (which wasn't hard since Payson was small then). Boy, I don't know about you but it's fun for me to just remember when....