The Wisconsin Central broke ground at West Menasha on June 5, 1871, and reached Stevens Point that November. In 1872 the line was finished to a new stop called Colby, named for Charles L. Colby of Boston, whose company held the contract to build the road to Ashland.

Crews began laying rail north from Colby on April 15, 1873. The stations along the way took Massachusetts names: Medford, Chelsea, Dedham, Walden, Worcester and Dorchester. The historical center dates the railroad's arrival in Dorchester to April 18, 1873.

The first iron rails twisted out of shape in the northern weather and were replaced with steel in 1886. For a depot, the railroad set an old boxcar beside the track. It burned in 1896.

The woods paid the bills. The best timber stood close to the track, so horse teams could haul logs cheaply to the mills and the rail cars. Around 1881 the village had about 400 people, and most of them worked for the sawmill. The first mill, Van Dusen's, stood where the lake is now. A stencil reading "Van Dusen & Co., Shaded A, Dorchester, Wis." marked its lumber. Shaving benches like the 1883 schnitzelbank at the historical center turned out shingles and ax handles.

Many of the newcomers spoke German. A trunk at the historical center is addressed by hand to Johann Jantsch in "Nord Amerika." In September 1889 the German Farmers Aid Society held a harvest festival with a full brass band. By 1898 The New Era carried ads for the Dorchester Roller Mills and its "Monogram Flour."

On September 28, 1901, the Clark County Circuit Court ordered the village incorporated, and the voters approved it on October 22. The election inspectors set the first village election for November 12, from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon, at LaBossier's Hall. Voters were to choose

"…a President, six trustees, a clerk, a treasurer, a supervisor, an assessor, a constable and two justices of the Peace."

Andrew Sorenson was the first village treasurer. He later served twenty years as street commissioner and constable.

Front Street ran along the tracks, unpaved, lined with saloons, stores and hotels. There were Kronschnabl's and Fred Marten's saloons, the "Jerk Water Saloon and Dance Hall," the Star Hotel, the Dorchester House, August Miller's hotel, Fred Distelhorst's brick store, Esser's Hall and an Opera House. The Dorchester State Bank opened in 1909 and the Co-op store by 1912. In 1919 a crew hauled in wagonloads of stone to level the street.

The congregations built Salem Church, the "Little White Church" and St. Peter's Lutheran. The high school held its 1913 commencement in the Opera House for a class of seven, and a three-story brick high school stood by 1916.

A Clark County history from around 1915 says the village "at one time was an important mill town" and now prospered "as the center of a rich farming community." Its business directory reads like a walk down Front Street:

On March 18, 1917, a blizzard buried a Soo Line locomotive at Dorchester, and men and boys from town dug out the cut by hand. Someone wrote on one of the pictures, "The boys on the Soo Line, not in the trenches."

Six years later came what the paper called "the most serious fire since 1895." It started around midnight in Sauter's bowling alley and spread through about fifteen buildings. Dorchester's own fire engine broke its drive shaft, and Abbotsford and Medford sent chemical engines. Paulson's Garage, the Kronschnabl post office, Homsted's drugstore, the Fuchsgruber and Holz Bros. stores, and Joe Bauernfeind's blacksmith shop and home were lost, about $150,000 in all. Several owners rebuilt.

On February 13, 1931, crowds watched the Joe Kronschnabl building burn. It held the family's home and, in front, a saloon and bowling alley run by Carl Mertens. Two chemical trucks held the fire for an hour, but "the old relic of a fire engine refused to operate," and help came from Colby. Mertens reopened in the garage next door.

The American Legion post took the name Leach-Paulson Post 517, for Sgt. Kenneth Leach and Pvt. Donald Paulson, two Dorchester High School graduates of 1940 who died in World War II. Its auxiliary organized in March 1948, and a new Legion Hall opened in 1949.

A new post office opened in 1942. Ed Werner's Clover Farm store sold groceries and meat. The Dorchester Furniture Co. made coffee and end tables in the 1950s. The Lions Club put on a Halloween parade with movies, treats and prizes. A new grade school and a new Co-op feed mill opened in 1960, and the Laabs-Reynolds factory was running by 1968.

In September 1959 fire took Carlson's Garage, a building more than 75 years old that had once been Dorchester's public school. It had been moved after the newer school went up around 1916 and spent decades as Edgar Paulson's garage. In 1965 the village took bids to replace its old frame village hall, "erected about a half century ago." The new municipal building, about $69,000, opened in January 1966 with room for the fire department that served the north halves of Mayville and Holton towns.

Lake Dorchester was made around 1971, and volunteers built the park beside it. By 1980 it had a 15-acre stocked lake, a ball diamond, a swimming pool, tennis courts, playground equipment and two shelter houses. "The park is a real community undertaking," longtime volunteer Pinter told the Times Review. "Very few persons say no when asked to help do some work there." Dorchester Days grew up around a state championship tractor pull.

On June 16, 1973, the village marked its hundredth year with a parade of horse teams, old cars and floats from the Dorchester Cheese Co., the bank, Meyer Lumber, Krueger Super Market, Sauter Bros., Kalepp Fish Farm, Schwoch Insurance, Mertens Garage, the taverns and churches, the 4-H, the Scouts, the Legion and the Lions. Diane Royek rode as Dorchester Queen.

Many of the photographs on this page were taken by Joe Weber, who set up as "Jos. C. Weber, Photographer, Dorchester Wis." around 1911. He carried mail on Rural Route 2 from 1917 until he left for the Army in July 1918, later served as fire chief, and was still in the pictures in the 1970s.

The Skerbecks came the furthest. Frank Skerbeck was a Bohemian sword swallower and high-wire walker whose family circus had toured Europe. After it went broke, a land agent sold him on northern Wisconsin, and in 1881 the family got off the train at Dorchester. Their 120 acres turned out to be thick forest, so they sold the timber to the Dorchester sawmill, and Frank trained the children in the barn. For about 25 years they played vaudeville in winter and toured under canvas in summer, and for a few years they joined Medford's Ephraim Williams in the "Consolidated American and German Railroad Shows." The family stayed. Their story is told in Joan M. Jensen's "The Skerbeck Circus," Voyageur magazine, 2008.