Then & Now: How immigration reshaped the look of a Minnesota farm town

WORTHINGTON, Minn. — Immigration from around the world has transformed Worthington, bringing new businesses to emptying downtown storefronts as well as new worship and recreational spaces to this town of 14,000 residents in the southwestern Minnesota farmland.

On the same downtown block where children once admired Coast King bikes while their parents bought furniture and do-it-yourself tools, Asian and Latino markets now bustle with shoppers lugging 50-pound bags of jasmine rice from Thailand or fresh meats seasoned “al pastor.” Figurines of Buddha and Jesus are for sale, standing on shelves behind the cashiers.

A former maternity and children’s clothing store is an immigration law office. The building that housed the local newspaper, The Globe, is now the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

And just past the end of the main street, baseball fields were recently remodeled with turf from a shuttered golf course and turned into soccer fields. On weekends, food trucks line the parking lot while two dozen teams in adult leagues play for hours on end to crowds of fans.

The American Legion that used to stand near the corn silos at the entrance of town has become a Mexican market and restaurant. So has the Thompson Hotel, built in the 1910s, whose historic tile floors are now paced by steady streams of customers hungry for burritos and molcajete mortars filled with fiery seafood and meat entrees.

Roberto Ayala came from El Salvador more than 10 years ago. He manages The Thompson Mexican Grill – a job that he says he landed because he made a serious effort to learn English before the town changed.

“When I came, there were no signs in Spanish, like at the hospital, or street signs, tourist information,” Ayala said in Spanish just before the lunch rush. “Minnesota is way to the north, but now the town is like half Latino, half American, and much has changed.”

Still, Ayala instills the need to learn English to his children as well as any newcomers who knock on the restaurant’s doors searching for work.

“Some people don’t do it because they come to this country only for a short time, supposedly, but I’ve seen a lot of people who spend many years and fall in love with this country, fall in love with this town,” he said.