Dorchester Times: FLASH: Flooded!

Monday, May 7, 2007

FLASH: Flooded!

As buckets of precipitation fell on Saline County and the Dorchester area this weekend, Mother Nature once again served us a reminder who is in charge.

According to an AP wire story, Turkey Creek was 5 feet over flood stage, forcing the closure of 20 county roads. Emergency Manager B.J. Fictum said flood watches and warnings remained in effect for Monday. The Dorchester, Wilber and Crete area recorded the state's heaviest precipitation amounts. Fictum said as much as 6 inches was reported in just a 24-hour period in Saline County. Some areas south of Dorchester reported as much as 7 inches over the weekend.

Below are photos from some of this weekend's historic rainfall. We welcome readers to submit their photos by e-mailing them to Dorchester.Times@gmail.com

In Town...

Above, the town's main artery, Washington Street, looked like a Venetian canal. Below, 8th Street and cars parked on it were submerged. But the water did not deter the kids, who brought out inflatable rafts and mattresses. Meanwhile, the outskirts of towns were reminiscent of the Everglades.

In the Countryside...

Above, fields of planted corn became large lakes in a matter of minutes, as more than 1.5 inches fell in less than 30 minutes in several locations. This was the sight along Tabor Hall road. Below, as torrential rains turned draws into raging streams, tornado-like winds did severe damage at the farms of Steve Vyhnalek and George Kasl, Jr., as well as to trees along Johnson Creek and Turkey Creek. Several county roads emerged damaged on Sunday morning. The AP reports that a number of trees at Pleasant Hill Cemetery fell over in the high winds, damaging eight headstones and monuments.

Squaw Creek...

Above, that's the spillover from Squaw Creek, which looked more like the Big Blue River on Sunday. Below, the little creek that runs along Dorchester's southern edge could not be contained.

Turkey Creek...

If Squaw Creek looked like the Big Blue River, Turkey Creek took on the form of the Platte. Below, Turkey Creek as it appeared Sunday at the Highway 15 bridge and the Creek's spillover near Pleasant Hill.

3 comments:

AnonymousMay 7, 2007 at 3:59 PM
UNBELIEVABLE!
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AnonymousMay 8, 2007 at 10:27 AM
Fantasitic shots you got here ...... I haven't seen turkey creek at that level of flooding in more than 10 years
ReplyDelete
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AnonymousMay 10, 2007 at 4:51 PM
great pics
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Dorchester: A Good Little Family Town

Dorchester, Nebraska (est. population 630) is located in northern Saline county. Close in proximity to Interstate 80, Dorchester is only 25 minutes from the state capital of Lincoln (est. population 250,000) and about 55 minutes from Omaha (metro population 725,000).

Dorchester's median resident age is 37 years. In 2005, Dorchester had a median family income of approximately $35,600. The median house value was about $63,000. About 95 percent of Dorchester residents commute to work via Interstate and highways.

The village has a quality public school, which received a $4.1 million expansion and modernization in 2008; it offers a small classrooms and individualized attention. Total enrollment of grades K-12 is around 230-250 students.

Ancestries of the Dorchester area are primarily German (42.4%), Czech (24.9%), Irish (12.5%), English (5.4%), and Dutch (4.9%).

Dorchester Historical Facts

* On July 4, 1871, the railroad reached Dorchester.
* Incorporated in 1881, Dorchester's population grew from 200 to 500 by 1882.
* In 1882, Dorchester had 90 buildings, 35 of which were businesses or public facilities. Brick buildings lined both sides of Washington Avenue for two blocks.
* Dorchester's longest-running newspaper was The Dorchester Star, which was published until the late 1940s.
* By 1889, Dorchester's population is said to have reached 800, while the town housed an opera house, a two-story brick schoolhouse with a bell tower, and four churches.
* By the 1910s, Dorchester had electricity, a water tower and a fire department.
* Dorchester's main arteries, Highways 6 and 33, were graveled in the 1940s.
* Dorchester's first irrigation well was drilled on Chris Weber's farm and rural electrification was finished following WWII.

A Village with History

Dorchester is one of the "alphabet towns" on the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad line built west from Lincoln. The town site was selected for its pleasant location in the northern part of Saline County, about eight miles west of Crete. This situation is an attractive one, being on the level prairie land, midway between the West Blue River and Turkey Creek. The first named stream is three miles north, and the latter about the same distance south from the town. Dorchester was platted in 1870 and incorporated in 1881. The name "Dorchester" came from either for a suburb of Boston by that name or a town in England. No one is sure. Two of the very first settlers were James Seely and Edward McIntyre, who both made Dorchester their permanent home.

Dorchester: In The Beginning

Here is a look at Dorchester around 1890, less than a decade after its official incorporation, as documented by Andreas' History of the State of Nebraska:
* POPULATION: "About 300, and is made up of a substantial and progressive class of citizens, who are moral and industrious. ... The town grew but very little until the year 1879, for the reason that Pleasant Hill, on Turkey Creek, a short distance south, was the county seat and naturally drew a trade for quite a large scope of country."
* BUSINESS: "The business and professional interests of the town are represented by three general merchandise stores, two drug, one grocery, one furniture, two hardware, and two millinery stores, one bank, two restaurants, two hotels, three livery stables, a post office, one newspaper office, two elevators, two lumber yards, two coal yards, two blacksmith shops, two lawyers and four physicians."
* SCHOOL: "The schoolhouse is a good one. The schoolhouse was built in 1872, since which time the public schools have been continually kept up. The present schoolhouse is 24' x 40' in size, two stories high. The school is graded and consists of three departments. The house is found too small, and arrangements will soon be made to increase its size."
* CHURCHES: "There are three substantial churches."
* HOMES: "The residence portion of the village is made up of neat houses of different styles of architecture, but none of them very large."
* NEWSPAPER: "The Dorchester Star, which was established August 21, 1881, by H. C. Bittenbender, who edited it until January 19, 1882, when he sold it to Ryerson & Bullock, the present proprietors. The Star is a bright weekly paper, five-column quarto, in size, and is Republican in politics."