Dorchester Times: Looking Back: The Establishment Of Dorchester's City Park

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Looking Back: The Establishment Of Dorchester's City Park

The Dorchester City Park has been part of our community for 95 years.

Makes you wonder where town kids played before that.

Dorchester was officially established in 1881, but the village had no village-run public park for its first 50 years.

Then, in June 1931, Jacob Sack, president of Sack Lumber and Coal Company, donated seven lots to the Village of Dorchester for use as a public park, according to The Centennial History of Dorchester and Pleasant Hill.

The village board acted promptly on the donation. Town leaders laid out and landscaped the property.

Over the generations, Dorchester residents have continued to improve the park. The basketball court was renovated in 2007 with help from members of the Dorchester girls basketball team.

In 2019, the community celebrated the opening of a splash pad after several years of planning and fundraising.

Dorchester's park also features a modern picnic shelter, public restrooms, swings, and playground equipment for younger children.

Nearly a century after his donation, the village remains grateful to Jacob Sack — and we encourage Dorchester families to use, enjoy and help care for Dorchester's proud park.

5 comments:

AnonymousJuly 17, 2007 at 7:36 PM
has anyone thought of putting the old shelter up at the school. It could be used during softball and baseball, and it would be nice to have some shade up there, also we could plant some trees. It could be a big improvement.
ReplyDelete
Replies
AnonymousJuly 17, 2007 at 9:32 PM
A shelter at the ball diamond?.....Now there's an idea........sounds like a great idea for the shop class at the school.
ReplyDelete
Replies
AnonymousJuly 19, 2007 at 5:12 PM
Maybe the park should be renamed Sack Park? Better yet maybe we could name it after someone willing to oversee several more improvements. Nerud Field came about because one good citizen dedicated much time to little league teams in the 1950s and 1960s.
ReplyDelete
Replies
AnonymousJuly 22, 2007 at 10:30 AM
I think the old shelter could better serve its purpose on the East side of the baseball diamond. A little landscaping with the shelter would be a big improvement. Great idea anonymous!
ReplyDelete
Replies
AnonymousJuly 31, 2007 at 11:29 AM
The idea of moving the shelter to the ball field was brought up to me by one of the DACA members during the tourneys. If I can speak for the rest of the committee, I know we would all love to see it up there. It could only help improve the field!
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Village Dweller checks all reader comments to determine if they are appropriate for print.

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."