Dorchester Times: Random Thoughts With The Village Dweller

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Random Thoughts With The Village Dweller

This feature is called "Random Thoughts."

What you are about to read are the collective random thoughts and observations of the Dorchester Times staff, posted by our own Village Dweller. Some of the musings will be provoking or enlightening; others will have less intellectual depth than the kiddie pool.

In any case, if you read something you agree with, let us know in the comments box. Disagree? Do the same. Have a random thought you want published, send it to dorchester.times@gmail.com.

Enjoy.

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* Select youth baseball team coming to Dorchester? We're hearing that is a possibility, but we're not sure who the driver(s) is behind the proposal. The matter is supposed to be discussed at Wednesday night's (Sept. 5) village board meeting at the Fire Hall.

* Coming soon to Dorchester -- Wagner Avenue. Last month, the Dorchester Village Board passed an ordinance designating a new street in town. It's called Wagner Avenue and it will connect 11th and 12th streets in the "Wagner's Replat" of Block 14. Don't ask us to explain exactly where this is. In fact, good luck finding Block 14 on the county assessor's map or with finding any official town plat map online. We're just repeating what we read in the village's official minutes, which are also not online -- even in the year 2018.

* Precipitation tops 5 inches in Dorchester. As of late Tuesday evening, Dorchester had received (UPDATED: more than 6.50" in the past since last Thursday) according to the Times' official rain gauge. And more is on the way. See the Dorchester area forecast here. Who do we contact to say "enough!"?

* See that picture above? Is Dorchester ready for Village Dweller apartments? We can already see the long line of applicants now. Maybe that will be an option in Dorchester's new addition and housing development. One can only hope.

* For your life's sake ... get your butt off the couch and do something. A new study finds Nebraska has the 13th highest adult obesity rate in the nation at 32%. That's up from 20.1% in 2000 and from 11.3% in 1990. And 30% of Nebraska kids ages 10-17 are overweight or obese. The cases of arthritis, heart disease and obesity-related cancer are expected to skyrocket in the near future. Sadly, Nebraska doesn't require high school students to participate in physical education. One look at the waistlines in the Nebraska Legislature tells us this should be addressed at the local level of our education system.

10 comments:

AnonymousSeptember 4, 2018 at 8:12 AM
Check your calendar, this is the 4th. Or in the random world,"One of these days".
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AnonymousSeptember 4, 2018 at 10:54 AM
Been saying it for a long time we need some decent apartments to rent beginning with the elderly
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AnonymousSeptember 4, 2018 at 12:18 PM
That mystery street is by the new construction. Proof of changing Times!
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AnonymousSeptember 5, 2018 at 10:01 AM
Why are there 2 couches behind the County Shop?
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AnonymousSeptember 5, 2018 at 10:36 AM
can the village board look into contracting with crete for service of the streets? from highway 33 to the treatment plant there its so rough that i did damage to my suspension system
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AnonymousSeptember 10, 2018 at 5:26 PM
Am wondering why or when it became acceptable to mow your lawn and adorn the village's streets with such beautiful green confetti? Our streets are already in disrepair, let's not make them any worse than they already are. When the rains come you will be crying because the streets aren't draining properly. You people need to be more considerate. Clean up after yourself!!
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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."