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Michael Middlestadt spent hours polishing and dusting antiques inside the General Store building at Dobby's Frontier Town. He and other members of the Box Butte Art Society wanted to volunteer their time to help get Dobby's ready for the Fall Festival on Friday and Saturday. 

Volunteers have been busy getting Dobby’s ready for the 32nd annual Dobby’s Fall Festival this Friday, Sept. 17 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday, Sept. 18 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

“Please join us for our Fall Festival,” said Dobby’s Frontier Town President Lori White. “This is our largest fundraiser for the year. With the exception of Covid year, we’ve had a fall festival every year since Dobby started it around 1990.”

The community was invited to a paint party on Sunday, Sept. 11 to help members of the St. John’s Church scrape and paint the Immanuel Lutheran Church at Dobby’s. Volunteers wore their painting clothes and came ready to work with their paint brushes. Paint and cleaner was provided by Dobby’s and lunch was provided by Cynthia and Kevin Horn.

Members of the St. John's Church and other community members volunteered to paint the church at Dobby's on Sunday. 

“Our community paint party at Dobby’s church was a success,” said Kevin Horn. “Thanks to all who assisted.”

“With the help of Bruce Faber and Laurie Kielwitz, we were able to do the scraping and get the sealant put on most of the building before the St. Johns crew arrived and painted the church building,” said White. “We also had a Border war in the shooting range with South Dakota and Nebraska competing. It was busy Sunday, thank you volunteers.”

Then on Tuesday, members of the Box Butte Art Society hosted a cleaning day for the community to help get Dobby’s ready for the festival.

Kyren Gibson, Michael Middlestadt, Amity Palmer, Patricia Jones, and Steph Mantooth were among the volunteers that worked hard at cleaning layers of dirt and dust out of the buildings, polish and dust antiques, pull weeds, and groom the grounds.

“I even took the rugs out of the bale house and beat them,” said Jones as she tossed dirt out from the Anderson Cabin. “We didn’t know there were even designs on those because they were so dirty.”

“We just love Dobby’s,” said Box Butte Art Society President Kyren Gibson. “We know how much work it is to accomplish the Fall Festival with the few volunteers that they have so we wanted to do what we could to help.”

Dobby’s Frontier Town was created by Dobby Lee that includes 27 building that allow visitors a unique hands-on opportunity to experience history.

“This is the end of the summer celebration after we’ve worked hard all summer and to show the community what improvements we’ve made on the facility as well as to have live entertainment, vending and great food,” said White.

The festival will hold two afternoons of live entertainment that will kick-off at 1 p.m. with Mike Pancost on guitar and vocals. St. John’s Brass will take the stage at 3 p.m. featuring a wide range of booming bass sounds. Between the musical groups, Sunday’s entertainment will include Humanities Nebraska speakers, Lyn Misser-Smith and Deb Carpenter-Nolting, enlightening the crowd with the topic, “Nice women seldom make history,” at 2 p.m.

“One of our big highlights this year will be Rex’s Hamburgers recreated,” White said. “If you knew who he was, it was a little hamburger shop in Alliance in the 1950s that had sliders, but actually smaller, he had ten burgers to a pound. It’s going to be awesome to be able to sell those again.”

If you’re not a hamburger fan, Laurie Kielwitz will be offering hotdogs and brauts, and Jen Littlehoop will serving up Navajo tacos. There will be something for everyone with a sweet tooth at the festival as well, including Bruce Faber cranking out homemade ice cream.

“He has an old-time machine to make the homemade ice cream, and it is to die for,” White said. “And the Faber grandkids will have a lemonade stand this year.”

Dutch Oven Jones will be cooking and handing out samples of mouthwatering delights and Dobby’s candy shop will be stocked with a wide range of treats.

“Our Candy Snap Comes to Life, it was established in Alliance in 1914, will be filled with goods from area bakers and candy makers that have donated their products,” White said.

For anyone willing to give it a try, the local Lions Club will be serving up sarsaparilla shots and bottles out of Dobby’s saloon.

“...It’s actually a root beer, a little bit more woody than what A&W and others are though,” White said. “In the old days, you had to be a certain height to be able to buy alcohol in the saloons. If you were under that height, they’d only let you have sarsaparillas. The Lions Club sells shots of sarsaparilla or bottles right off the bar in the saloon, which is neat.”

Another festival favorite will be Dobby’s shooting range featuring a fast draw competition and an opportunity to tryout your own quick draw reflexes on the range targets.

“We also will have the shooting range open with the fast draw competition,” White said. “There will be guys there that will give demonstrations, or you can strap on a pistol and challenge the targets yourself, which is always a lot of fun.”

Sunday’s festival activities will include a cowboy church service at 10 a.m. and Josephine’s Photo Parlor will be open for old-time dress up photo shoots.

“We always let people know that their donations are critical to keeping our facility open,” White said. “We rely totally on our donations and our volunteers, and we are grateful for both. Dobby believed in teaching history and education to people with a hands-on experience and that’s what we’re trying to continue by preserving his dream through keeping the frontier town open.”

“We are always looking for volunteers,” she said. “We are all getting older every year and could really use some help. I’m one of the youngest out here and I’m getting up there. I think somewhere along the road word got out that you had to be a carpenter to volunteer and that’s not true. If you can sweep, pull weeds or just be here for support we would love to have you.”

Dobby’s Frontier Town is located at 320 E 25th St. in Alliance.

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Michael Middlestadt spent hours polishing and dusting antiques inside the General Store building at Dobby's Frontier Town. He and other members of the Box Butte Art Society wanted to volunteer their time to help get Dobby's ready for the Fall Festival on Friday and Saturday. 

Members of the St. John's Church and other community members volunteered to paint the church at Dobby's on Sunday. 

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