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State Center Development Association

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State Center is very proud of its heritage and history. To that end, many community-minded people pitched in to purchase and preserve the historic Watson’s Grocery Store on Main Street. The store originally was a turn-of-the-century grocery and dry goods store. Most of the antique fixtures remain, and the museum today preserves the look and feel of what was commonplace in State Center from 1895 until it closed in the 1980s

The community has made a commitment to save itself from becoming another economic ghost town by providing its full support to the “Main Street Program”, and as a result, the downtown has begun to bloom again in the “Rose Capital of Iowa”.  In June of 2003, just in time for the 45th annual Rose Parade, the three-block area of State Center’s historic Main Street was given a complete facelift with new sidewalks, street lighting, street resurfacing, and infrastructure.