× Expand Illustration by Britt Spencer

The Sage enjoys his reputation as a curmudgeon, but it must now be ripped away, exposing a tender regret. Belleville’s noble 9.2-mile stretch might indeed be the longest Main Street, were it not for the blackguards in Idaho who cannily forged a 36.8-mile Main Street just to defy liquor laws. Thirsty for both booze and profit, they incorporated a strip of land on either side of U.S. Route 20 as Island Park so all of the businesses along that stretch could legally serve or sell alcoholic beverages.

As far as I can ascertain, the only other contender is Potosi, the, er, “Catfish Capital of Wisconsin.” Its claim is easily shot out of the water: In the 1950s, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! proclaimed Potosi “the smallest town with the longest street without an intersection.” Intersections are, in my not always humble opinion, irrelevant.

Should you try a newfangled search on Answers.com, you will find Island Park as the longest Main Street but Belleville as the longest continuous Main Street. Continuity is not irrelevant.

Some folks simply proceed as though the title is uncontested. Glidden Paint sponsored a colorful makeover of the “Longest Main Street in America” in 2010. The next year, a “Sound-off” in the Belleville News-Democrat snarled that Belleville’s mayor should resign if he did not support a gas station and car wash “on the longest Main Street in the U.S. What does he want to put there, a doggy park?”

Other residents, however, are laudably precise. The Gingerbread Cookie Walk takes place on “Illinois’ longest Main Street,” and the Main Street Marathon plots its course along “what some claim to be the longest street called ‘Main.’” Asked whether “second-longest” might be an apt designation, Belleville historian Bob Brunkow replied, “I’m not gonna touch that.”

He did, however, regale us with the street’s provenance. First named St. Clair Street, it was built in 1814; a farmer had donated land for a public square because the county seat needed to move from Cahokia to a more central location. The new street was soon extended all the way to the river, connecting Belleville with Illinoistown (later renamed East St. Louis). In the 1840s, macadam was laid, a great improvement over the dirt road’s buzzing clouds of mosquitoes and wheel-sucking spring muck.

Should one still long for genuine distinction, the Veterans Memorial Fountain, centering Belleville’s town square, is the only veterans memorial fountain in the United States that sits in the middle of a major thoroughfare. Top that.