I knew Truckee when the ambiance downtown was still decidedly beat-up train stop. The main drag across the street from the tracks now is walkable, historic, fun and yes, busy.Sure, there is a certain nostalgia for the uneven wood walkways, the buildings with their worn-away paint, the cast of quaint poverty. I doubt anyone today seriously misses then, though, much as they holler, and they do holler. You think Park City is unique this way? Like here, the folks who holler most invariably have gray hair and wear their years of residency like a crown, a shield, even a sword.  Vail the town, not talking about the company Parkites love to grump about, made a decision while I was there to move from asphalt to pavers in the core. I made fun of the heated streets, which really were pedestrian throughfares, but that did take care of the beeping heavy equipment pushing soiled snow this way and that into grimy piles.Going to the pavers was brilliant and simple. Asphalt and curbs, really?The somewhat “normal” village down the Roaring Fork from Aspen — Basalt — is moving this way since I left a little over a year ago. But oh the grousing during the preparations to widen the sidewalks and spare at least some of the traditional asphalt and curbs, like that’s some hallmark of American culture, some earmark of Rockwell, where rubber simply must meet the road and walking more than a few steps is a mortal sin.  Downtown Aspen’s little refuge of pedestrian red brick and a stream running through hasn’t killed any golden geese. Among other delights, it’s a great place in the late summer to enjoy a drink or two with friends, hearing the birds and seeing the occasional bear in the trees.My daughter’s main work contracting with the city of Grass Valley in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada has centered on making the COVID closure of a downtown street permanent.You’d think the city planned to drop a dirty bomb when its leaders committed to turning the street into a pedestrian way. Where would people park if not curbside? Who would go there anymore? How would the stores sell a thing? How would they stock up? Surely, this would make a ghost of historic Mill Street.I heard her first-hand accounts in the run-up, the work with store owners, some in favor, some bitterly opposed mainly because they were afraid and couldn’t imagine. I also heard directly from residents and store keeps themselves while I was publisher of the local paper.At City Council meetings, you would have thought they were the vast majority. Only, polling showed that community sentiment actually ran the other way. The people supported what turned out to be a beautiful change. The hot air of opposition, as everywhere, concentrated to a blue flame in the council chambers, commentary sections and social media feeds.The pavers like Vail’s went in. The cars vanished with the curbs. The space now is cool. I’m her dad, so you can’t trust my word, but my daughter is good. Now the place packs up like never before each Friday of the holiday season’s Cornish Christmas. When I visit, there are always people — a lot of families — strolling the street whose sidewalks used to roll up literally at sunset. You hear voices rather than engines, that dull, fumy drone gone, the right kind of quiet.It’s a comfortable, friendly space no less historic and charming for the lack of asphalt and curbs and cars. The quaint old buildings are showcased more, not less, in this mining town that predates Park City by several decades.  I’ve been here for about a minute — no long-timer stripes on me to brandish as if medals. I can claim no length-of-residence cred. But still, I do have eyes to see a clogged street full of cars, grimy snow, butt ugly cracked asphalt and curbs — along with way more potential for what should be a great historical district.The committee of citizens and business leaders’ conceptual ideas about Main Street have plenty of flaws, for sure. They are conceptual notions, after all. Public spaces should look more miner era and less, well, avant garde to my eye. A gondola to Deer Valley has some expensive, maybe impossible, right of ways to work out. Are more hotels really the answer?But the post office definitely should shrink back to its 1920s self. The addition from the 1960s-’70s is neither modern nor historic, only homely. The space indeed can be better used for today’s purposes. Besides, Swede Alley is perfectly suitable for the full-time residents still left in Old Town to congregate at a post office, which doesn’t have to be on Main Street to lie within walking distance.Making Upper Main fully pedestrian with pavers wouldn’t degrade the experience at all. It wouldn’t detract from the funky, cool buildings. It would highlight them while clearing away noise and smells and car clutter that people don’t notice till they are gone. This would be a very good thing.That’s not the current idea, of course. The city is short-arming a bit for the inevitable naysayers who seem to believe there’s something special about anywhere-USA main streets with their curbside parking and traffic. Sigh. But even the half measure with one lane for driving and parking on Main Street is better than today.Old Town no longer is the sum total of the poor mining digs that ultimately provided historic charm. It’s no longer a ghost town. It’s not really a residential neighborhood anymore, either, though some people still live there, their homes at night beacons between the stretches of dark in the off-seasons before the short-term renters and second-home owners arrive.Main Street itself doesn’t have to represent the worst of the ’70s with cool buildings hidden behind parked cars and traffic. To make history stand out as it should, the street needs to be modernized. This is only too plain to see.Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745.The post Journalism Matters: Modernize Main Street so history can stand out appeared first on Park Record.