Dorchester Times: NEWS ROUND-UP: Important Phone Numbers To Keep Handy

Sunday, August 19, 2018

NEWS ROUND-UP: Important Phone Numbers To Keep Handy

Important Phone Numbers to Remember: It's late and Village Hall is closed. Who do you call about after-hour concerns about Dorchester's water or streets? What about if the electricity goes out? Dorchester residents should write down these number. The after-hour emergency number for water, sewer and streets is 402-381-8442. After-hour power outage dispatch is 402-826-4312. Keep these numbers handy. (And remember that you may not be able to access these numbers via the internet if the power is out.)

Pay Levels for Dorchester Village Officials: An August 8 public notice disclosed the compensation levels for employees of the Village of Dorchester. We are passing those along, as this is public information. The highest paid official is the Utilities Superintendent, making $18.36 per hour, followed by the Village Clerk/Treasurer making $15.80 per hour, followed by the Assistant Utilities Superintendent making $14.80 per hour. The Office Assistant makes 10.56 per hour; the Dump Site Attendant makes $10 an hour, as does summer help. Village Board Chair makes $90 per meeting, while the other four Village Trustees make $80 per meeting.

Fall Sports Season Officially Begins This Week: The DHS Longhorns' fall sports season officially begins this week. The volleyball team hosts East Butler at the DHS gymnasium at 6 p.m. for the JV game and 7 p.m. for the varsity contest. The football team kicks off its new six-man era on Friday at 7 p.m. at Nerud Field, with a "burger bash" for all fans at 5:30 p.m. at the school. Former six-man players from the 1950s will be honored at halftime. Dozens of former players are expected to be present. (The Lincoln Journal Star has designated the DHS vs. Walthill game this Friday as a "key match up.")

Dorchester School Yearbooks Online: We recently received an e-mail from a reader who asked us where we were getting our "old pictures" that we post on the Dorchester Times Facebook page. Our stash of old photos are all on the internet. We take them from the online library of DHS yearbooks. Click here for access to the online Dorchester yearbooks.

Saline County Gets Examined by Sports News Website: Sports-centric SBNation.com has profiled Saline County in its look at all 93 Nebraska counties. The site notes that Saline County was established in 1855 and was given the name Saline ... signifying salt ... under the false supposition that it contained great salt deposits." Nobody ever thought, “Maybe we should change the name?," the website quips. "County seat is Wilber. However at one point it was Swan City and then it was moved to Pleasant Hill. It moved to Wilber after a group of 300 people went to Pleasant Hill as a show of force to carry away the county records." Also, General Victor Vifquain "was the county’s first settler and was alone as the first settler for over a year. That was probably a lonely time. He was a veteran of the Civil and Spanish war."

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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."