Dorchester, NE

Dorchester is a village in Saline County, about 38 miles southwest of Lincoln. The 2020 census counted 596 residents. Its town plan still shows the railroad logic behind its beginning: the Burlington and Missouri River line reached the site in 1871, and the original plat placed the commercial street at right angles to the tracks. Dorchester was laid out in 1870 by the South Platte Land Company, a railroad subsidiary, turning a stretch of prairie into one of the towns built along the westward line.

The first name on paper was DeWitt, but Nebraska already had a town by that name, so Dorchester was chosen. The railroad brought a post office, hotel, stores, barbers, and a lumber and coal yard in the early 1870s. The Saline County Historical Museum is based in Dorchester, and its collection includes the town's 1872 depot, now used to hold railroad memorabilia. Dorchester still carries the shape of a railroad village: a main street, a county museum, and fields stretching away from tracks that made the settlement possible.