Dorchester Times: May 2026

Saturday, May 2, 2026

Saline County Museum Is Open For 2026 Season

It's that time of year again. The Saline County Museum will be open for the summer season beginning Sunday, May 3, according to social media posts.

The museum (located in south Dorchester) will be open every Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m.

Admission to the museum and its numerous buildings is free, although donations are welcome.

For those who don't know, the museum's roots can be traced back to the 1950s, when Dorchester's own Rosa Dusanek had a dream of building a Saline County museum to house the history of our area's people.

Here's how it went down:

In 1957, the Saline County Historical Society was established. In 1960, the Saline County commissioners gave the society a one-tenth mill levy. The museum's first building -- the teal colored structure you see from Hwy. 33 -- was built in 1964.

Today there are more than a dozen buildings.

The Kaspar Memorial Building (white and blue building near Washington Ave.) features antiques automobiles and farm equipment.
The Research Building (gray and red building near Hwy 33) now features a old-fashioned General Mercantile Store as it would have appeared in the early 1900-1920s.
The Weidner Building contains turn-of-the century horse equipment, wagons, and old-time printing presses.
The Chapel was refurbished in 2025 and contains “In Loving Memory” funeral displays, an altar and wedding dresses and suits. A nearby memorial pays tribute to Dorchester's Charlie Havlat, the last American killed in the European Theater at the end of WWII.
The Memorial Building has an 1800s bedroom, a 1950s living room, a parlor and an old-fashioned kitchen. There is a textile room, dentist office, doctor’s office and a beauty shop. It was recently upgraded to include air conditioning, we're told.
The Machinery Building has implements from the past centuries. In recent years, it has been re-organized with items labeled to explain how old-timer equipment was used.
The Voting Building is original. This building was only used for voting.
The Buckingham School is a one-room country school from 1871. It is a building where present day children can go to school to see how their great grandparents were educated.
The Burden Home belonged to the first black homesteader in Saline County. Seven children were born and raised in this tiny two-room home, built just after the Civil War.
The Cizek log cabin, which dates back to 1866, is in the white building north of the Burden home, along with a large, fascinating collection of barbed wire and other items.
The Dorchester Railroad Depot houses fascinating train and railroad-related memorabilia, giving visitors a look at how Americans traveled to distant locations before planes and modern reliable automobiles.
The Main Building contains a wide variety of items, from John Palky's pre-historic tool collection, to military displays, to items showcasing Pleasant Hill's history.
And the Plato Post Office building is a traveling post office, a tiny building that moved from farm to farm.

The Saline County Museum is operated strictly by volunteers. The Saline County Historical Society Board consists of several individuals who meet quarterly. And the museum volunteers say they are working on new displays.

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."