SAUK CENTER

city, Stearns county, central Minnesota, U.S., on the Sauk River at the southern tip of Sauk Lake, 45 miles (72 km) northwest of St. Cloud. Settled in 1856 and laid out in 1863, it was named for the Sauk (Sac) Indians. The community developed as a service point for a farming area (corn , hay, and dairying) and produces butter and animal feeds. It is best known, however, as the birthplace of Sinclair Lewis, America's first Nobel Prize-winning novelist. His boyhood home has been restored with original furnishings and family memorabilia, and the Sinclair Lewis Interpretive Center exhibits his original manuscripts and letters and includes a research library. Sauk Center was the model for the Gopher Prairie of Main Street (1920) and was also the setting for other novels by Lewis. Inc. village, 1876; city, 1889. Pop. (1990) 3,581.