Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Looking Back: The Establishment Of Dorchester's City Park


The Dorchester City Park has been part of our community for 83 years.

Kinda makes you wonder where town kids played before that, huh?

After Dorchester's official founding in 1881, our village had no official park for the community's first fifty years. Then in June 1931, Jacob Sack, president of Sack Lumber and Coal Company, donated seven lots to the Village of Dorchester for use as a public park.  That's according to "The Centennial History of Dorchester and Pleasant Hill."

The village board acted promptly on the donation.  Town leaders laid out and landscaped the plot of land.  

Today, our city park features a new park shelter, a basketball court, public restrooms, swings and new playground equipment for younger children.

More than 80 decades after his donation, we are grateful to Mr. Sack and we encourage Dorchester's families to utilize and maintain our fine city park.

5 comments:

  1. has anyone thought of putting the old shelter up at the school. It could be used during softball and baseball, and it would be nice to have some shade up there, also we could plant some trees. It could be a big improvement.

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  2. A shelter at the ball diamond?.....Now there's an idea........sounds like a great idea for the shop class at the school.

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  3. Maybe the park should be renamed Sack Park? Better yet maybe we could name it after someone willing to oversee several more improvements. Nerud Field came about because one good citizen dedicated much time to little league teams in the 1950s and 1960s.

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  4. I think the old shelter could better serve its purpose on the East side of the baseball diamond. A little landscaping with the shelter would be a big improvement. Great idea anonymous!

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  5. The idea of moving the shelter to the ball field was brought up to me by one of the DACA members during the tourneys. If I can speak for the rest of the committee, I know we would all love to see it up there. It could only help improve the field!

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