Dorchester Times: Hey, Fourth Graders! Win Big Money In Severe Weather Poster Contest

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Hey, Fourth Graders! Win Big Money In Severe Weather Poster Contest

The springtime severe weather season is quickly approaching and that means it’s time for the annual 2015 Nebraska Severe Weather Awareness Poster Contest. But the deadline to turn your poster in is Feb. 27!

The contest, sponsored by Nebraska Association of Emergency Management, the National Weather Service and the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, is part of the annual Severe Weather Awareness Week effort by emergency management directors and coordinators across Nebraska.

There will also be a contest just for Saline County students.

The poster contest is open to all fourth-grade students in Nebraska (including home-schooled and private school students). Teachers are encouraged to have students participate while teaching them about hazards of severe weather in Nebraska. While not specifically designed to promote tornado awareness, tornadoes are the most common theme chosen for posters. Lightning and flooding, which are also products of severe thunderstorms, are also good topic choices.

The first-place winner in the state contest wins a $125 gift card, second-place winner receives a $100 gift card and third-place winner receives a $75 gift card provided by the Nebraska Association of Emergency Management. The fourth-place poster winner will receive a $50 gift card sponsored by the National Weather Service. All four state winners will also receive a NOAA All-Hazards Weather Alert Radio from Saline County Emergency Management. (In the Saline County portion of the contest, the top four poster artists will receive gift cards and awards during the Regional Severe Weather Seminar at Saline Center Hall on Saturday, March 28 at noon.)

Here are the rules:

Poster artists must be a fourth-grader. Entries must be related to the theme of severe weather safety and will be judged on originality, effort and accuracy. All entries must be on an 11" x 17" sheet of white paper, providing a 1-inch white border to allow for mounting the winning posters. Any medium may be used (crayon, paint, markers, etc.). Only one entry is allowed per pupil.

All entries must be received by Saline County Emergency Management by Feb. 27, 2015. Contact BJ Fictum, Saline County Emergency Management Coordinator, at (402) 821-3010 or via email at scema@diodecom.net for more information. Her will pick up the posters.

Each entry must include student name, age, complete home address, home phone number, name, location and phone number of school on the back side of the entry.

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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."