Corinth | Dispatch | Osborne | Rose Valley
Homesteading in Osborne County
Dispatch
In late 1869 a group of Dutch-speaking settlers from Pella, Iowa, began taking homesteads along Oak Creek, in what is now northwestern Mitchell, northeastern Osborne, southeastern Smith, and southwestern Jewell counties, starting at the creek's confluence with the North Fork Solomon River and progressing northward. The next year a colony of settlers from Holland, Michigan, called the Rotterdam Colony, also arrived. In 1871 the Rotterdam Post Office was first established in northeastern Osborne County to service the growing community. Twenty years later this post office was later renamed Dispatch (after the way the mail was "dispatched" by horseback) and moved to a county road intersection on the Smith-Jewell County line that became the center of the Dispatch community.
Dispatch had at one time two stores and other businesses going. The post office was closed in 1891 and the Great Depression and subsequent World War II aided in the decline of the community. At present the Dutch Christian Reformed Church still operates at the site of Dispatch, and descendants of those first settlers living in the area still speak the Dutch language.
Sources
Information from Von Rothenberger