Downtown Minot is the central business district of Minot, North Dakota, located south of the Souris River in the Souris Valley. Downtown is the site of the first permanent settlement in Minot in 1886. Downtown is home to many of Minot's cultural sites of interest. It is also home to numerous galleries, stores and restaurants. The Minot Riverwalk traverses the downtown.

Downtown Minot is located in the Souris River Valley between North Hill and South Hill along US Route 83. The neighborhood is roughly bound by Fifth Avenue South to the south, Fifth Street Southwest to the west, CP's railroad tracks to the north and Front Street to the east. The major streets through downtown include Broadway (formerly Second Street West), the Burdick Expressway (Business US 2/52), Main Street and Central Avenue. Main Street and Central Avenue divide the city's street into four quadrants. Streets east of Main Street are designated east, while streets west of Main Street are designated west. Likewise, streets north of Central Avenue are designated north, while those to the south are designated south. Downtown is connected to the north side of the Souris River by three bridges, the Broadway Bridge and the Third Street Bridge carry automobile traffic over the railroad track and river and the Anne Street Viaduct is a pedestrian bridge making this crossing. The Broadway Bridge, which carries US 83 across the river, was completed in 1962. The First Avenue Pedestrian Bridge over the Souris River, built in 1935, connects downtown with the Torbenson neighborhood. The Eastwood Park Bridge is a pedestrian bridge over the Eastwood Oxbow, which connects downtown with the Eastwood Park neighborhood. The Eastwood Park Bridge, a false arch bridge built in 1927, carries Sixth Street from Central Avenue to First Avenue SE. The First Street Stairs is a set of stairs connecting two sections of First Street and downtown with South Hill.

In 1808, Alexander Henry The Younger identified the Assiniboine living along the Souris Valley as the Little Girl band. The Little Girl band or Souris River Assiniboine were the southernmost tribe of the Assiniboine The region they inhabited later became part of Rupert's Land, part of Hudson's Bay Company claim. This land did not become part of the United States until fifteen years after the Louisiana Purchase, at the London Convention. Minot was first settled in 1886, when the Great Northern Railway was extended to that location. Originally, a tent city sprung up where the trestle was being constructed across the Gassman Coulee. When it became known that the railroad had picked a townsite to the east, the tent city was relocated to what is now downtown Minot. At this time, the area was part of the Dakota Territory, whose capital had been transferred from Yankton in what is now South Dakota, to nearby Bismarck in 1883.

Olfa Olson, Ole Spokle, Ed Kettleson and Erik Ramstad were the first to settle in what is now Minot. Ramstad bought the tract which includes downtown. The area originally called the Second Crossing of the Mouse, later in 1886 was given the name Minot, after James J. Hill's friend, Henry Davis Minot, a fellow railroad executive and ornithologist. In 1886, people quickly began settling the downtown area. J.H. Charlesboise opened a blacksmith shop and Christ Lindberg opened a saloon. Allen Tompkins, who later became mayor of Minot, moved to the town and soon built the Minot's first hotel, which would later become the Parker House. Allen's son, Ernest Minot Tompkins, was the first child born in the new city. Construction of the railroad, farming and needed services provided early settlers with jobs. Another early way to make money was through the collection of buffalo bones from the area.

People collected buffalo bones from the surrounding area and brought them to the railroad track downtown. The bones were used for fertilizer and in the process of refining sugar. Piles of bones were stacked along the railway. In 1888, the pile along the railroad tracks extending east from Main Street was so large that the railroad built a spur track to load cars. Lignite mining was another earlier industry that was established around Minot.

On July 16, 1887, the village of Minot was incorporated and James H. Scofield became the first mayor. The second mayor of Minot, elected the following year, was the city's first physician, Dr. Edmund Belvea. Minot's population at this time was already around four hundred. By 1890, Minot's population was nearly thirteen hundred. Minot's early population growth earned it its nickname "The Magic City". By the 1910 census, Minot had outgrown Bismarck, to become the third largest city in the state. By 1970, however, Bismarck had regained that position. The Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railway, nicknamed the Soo Line for Sault Ste. Marie's pronunciation, was the second railroad to reach Minot, in 1893. The Soo Line Passenger Depot, built in 1912, served this line. In 1887, the city began publishing its first newspaper, the Minot Rustler Tribune. In the early 1920s, bank robbers, "Smiling" Johnny Reid and "Chicago Freddie" were living in Minot. Johnny Reid was one of several aliases used by Leslie Ayer, born in Prince Rupert, British Columbia in 1895. "Chicago Freddie", along with Arthur Schultz and George Long, were aliases of Arthur G. Davis, an American bank robber. Davis had just been released on parole, when he met Ayer in Minot in 1921. The pair stole more than $2 million from banks in Canada and the United States in the early 1920s.

In 2011, the Souris River flood inundated much of the river valley in Saskatchewan, North Dakota and Manitoba. In Minot, about a quarter of residents of the city were evacuated. On June 24, the Souris River surpassed previous crest heights This was considered a five-hundred year flood event. Hesco barriers were installed by the National Guard downtown before the flooding began. The secondary dikes and Hesco barriers helped to limit some of the flooding downtown. The flooding downtown was primarily in the northern section of the East End/Bayou section up to Central Avenue.

The top employers in Downtown Minot, according to the Minot Area Development Corporation in the first quarter of 2013 are: