Hello all,
I had posted that my great grandfather came there do Dodge in about 1979 with his brother. My grandfather was City Engineer for prob 40 years or more so we have a lot of stories etc. My dad was raised there born in 1930 so here is some treasure hunting spots for you from his recollection. Feel freee to email me if you want to know more as I get it.
kevinkirk51@gmail.com
Yes I know where the fair grounds were. They were located east of the grandstand about 1/4 mile and then south between there and the river. There were a noumber of buildings where they had all kind of exhibits. They also used the lower floor of the grandstand as I remember. There was a race track and rodeo grounds in front of the grandstand, and they used to have a town baseball team that to played baseball there. I think that they were called the "Cowboys" but I am not sure about this. I went with my dad sometimes to watch the game. I was even around when they were building the grandstand. It was a WPA project and most of the work was done by hand. They had the concrete mixer set up down in the lower floor of the grandstand and would haul the concrete up ramps to pour in the upper part of the structure. What a job, but it did make work for those who had no jobs. My dad was in charge of all the WPA projects in town. They built the bandshell and the rock walls in the park and some bridges in the park.
The original cemetery was east of Avenue "B" along the east side of the alley that runs behind the alley between Avenue "B" and Avenue "C" and north of Division Street. The fence for the cemetery was on the east side of that alley, and the town people wouldn't let the bodies that they dug up at Boot Hill be buried in the cemetery and so they buried them along the west side of the cemetery fence and I think that my dad said that there were about 13 graves along there. Then when they moved the cemetery to Maple Grove which is the one west of Dodge, they evidently forgot to move the Boot Hill bunch and they dug through those graves when they built the sewer in the alley later on. The Boot Hill bodies were moved, at least as many as they could find when the city built the Third Ward School, where my dad went to school. He said that every once in a while a small bone would show up on the play ground while he was in school there. The third ward school was approximately where the brick building is between Fourth and Fifth and south of Spruce Street. It was originally built to house the city offices and the fire station, but I am not sure what they use it for now. Boot Hill originally was a bluff that went south clear to what is now U.S. 50 going west and used to be called Chestnut Street. They excavated that whole area in there to build a city auditorium and decided not to and so the Old Dodge deal took it over and developed it.