Dorchester Times: Looking Back: 40 Years Ago, Dorchester Celebrated Its Centennial

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Looking Back: 40 Years Ago, Dorchester Celebrated Its Centennial

Four decades ago -- July 24-26, 1981 -- Dorchester celebrated its centennial. For those old enough to remember, it was quite an event. Highlights included a new bandstand (a duplicate of the one destroyed by fire in 1956), a centennial pageant, ice cream social, parade, barbecue, street dance, horseshoe tournament, quilt show, and morning worship service.

At the time, you could buy Dorchester Centennial memorabilia at the downtown Centennial Headquarters Building. Caps were $5, top hats were $4, adult t-shirts were $6, and dinner plates were $10. You could even get a Dorchester Centennial spoon for $2.50 (now $12.99 on eBay thanks to Joe Biden's inflation).

There was a months-long build-up to the actual celebration. For example, the nationally known Roger Welsch told tales of pioneer spirit at the Dorchester Centennial grand opening Feb. 15, 1981.

On April 22 of that year, the centennial committee hosted an Arbor Day tree planting event -- planting more than 100 Scotch Pine seedlings at the Dorchester Cemetery. U.S. Rep. Doug Bereuter (R-Neb.) was in attendance. Meanwhile, every Dorchester elementary school student was provided a shrub seedling to take home to plant.

On June 23, 1981, a group of Dorchester residents -- young and old -- met at the Saline County Courthouse. There, Byron Panter, grandson of S.G. Panter (one of the original signers of Dorchester's original charter), handed Bonnie Stehlik Dorchester's incorporation papers from 1881. Stehlik was the first in a team of several Dorchester youth who ran the papers to Dorchester, relay style. (Other runners included Lee Anderson; Time and Julie Axline; John, Joel and Doug Weber; Lenny Gish; Andy and April August; Matt Bolton; Tiffany Slepicka; Sean and Nicole Kremer; W.J. Plouzek; Sharon Axline; and Larry Gish (who organized the run).

When the three-day centennial celebration finally arrived, there were many highlights -- far too many to recall in this short space. But many Dorchester residents and natives still have their copies of the Dorchester Centennial history book and centennial cookbook (compiled by Evelyn Novak and her team).

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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."