Dorchester Times: NEWS ROUNDUP: Area Fishing Winners, DHS Alumna Named 'Engineer Of The Year'

Monday, May 30, 2016

NEWS ROUNDUP: Area Fishing Winners, DHS Alumna Named 'Engineer Of The Year'

Dorchester Youth Are Winner Of Fishing Contest: The 15th annual Free Family Fishing Day and Youth Fishing & Casting Derby was held May 21 at the Willard L. Meyer Recreation Area near Tobias. According to the Lincoln Journal Star, the event was sponsored by the Lower Big Blue Natural Resources District (NRD) and area businesses. More than 100 kids ages 1-18 participated in the Youth Fishing Derby with awards being presented for the Most Fish Caught, Biggest Fish Caught, Smallest Fish Caught, and for the Casting Contest. Prizes were awarded to all participants. Among the top award winners in each age group were: Ages 5 and under: Most Fish-Brody Rains, Dorchester; Ages 10-12: Most Fish-Cabbott Kemerling, Dorchester; and Smallest Fish - Clayton Schnell, Dorchestester.

DHS Alumna Kristi Nohavec Awarded 'Architect of the Year' Honors: Kristi Nohavec, a 1989 graduate of Dorchester High School, is a structural engineer at Leo A Daly, an architectural and engineer firm in Omaha. Earlier this month, Nohavec was named "Engineer of the Year" by the Nebraska Society of Professional Engineers. According to KETV, among her many other duties, Nohavec is the lead structural engineer on a project to restore Omaha's Burlington Station, a once-majestic train depot that hasn't been used since 1974. KETV NewsWatch 7 is bringing it back to be its news station. When she received her licence, Nohavec was only the 17th woman licensed to practice architecture in the state of Nebraska. Our congrats to Kristi for receiving this distinguished award.

Dorchester's Flag Retirement Ceremony is June 14: The Times has learned that the Dorchester American Legion will host a flag retirement ceremony on June 14 at 6 p.m. A covered dish dinner will follow the service. All color guards, Auxiliary units and Sons of American Legion members are welcome and urged to attend. All Dorchester area residents are invited to come early and bring your unserviceable U.S. flags. Flags can also be left with Hersh Talley at The Brand in Crete. For more information, call Larry Kaspar at (402) 946-6711 or Rich Kasl at (402) 946-7651. Please come early and bring your unserviceable flags.

No Flags On Main Street For Memorial Day?: Many town residents were extremely disappointed today to not see that row of American flags lining the main street of Dorchester. Memorial is the one day a year we take to honor those who gave their lives for this country in times of war. Dating back to 1776, roughly 1.4 million Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice in times of battle. Surely the Village of Dorchester could have taken a couple of hours to properly honor those men (and women) who gave everything for the red, white and blue. (One area resident in his 80s told us he couldn't remember a Memorial Day in the past 40 years when the flags weren't out on main street.) Our thanks to the American Legion members and Sons of American Legion members, as well as other ceremony participants, who did pay tribute this morning at the Dorchester and Pleasant Hill cemeteries.

3 comments:

AnonymousMay 31, 2016 at 10:50 AM
Um, speaking of the village, why am I getting a reminder on my May 31 utility bill about a planned electrical outage for May 11. C'mon, man.
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SteveMay 31, 2016 at 5:24 PM
Great work Kristi Nohavec!!!
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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."