The city of Sherwood is throwing itself a celebration party today and taking advantage of the opportunity to teach residents more about its history as a community.
Sherwood Heritage Day will celebrate Sherwood’s April 22, 1948, incorporation as a city. Today’s public celebration will act as both a 65th birthday party and an official start for the recently formed Sherwood History and Heritage Commission as stewards of the city’s past, said Darrell Brown, chairman of the city’s history commission. The commission, which started in January, is sponsoring the event.
The event will begin with a free lunch of hamburgers and hot dogs at 11 a.m. at the Jack Evans Senior Citizens Center, 2301 Thornhill Drive, in Sherwood. A program by city and civic officials will follow around 11:30 a.m.
“I think we’ll have a pretty good turnout,” Sherwood Mayor Virginia Hillman said. “I think it’s a positive thing for our community.”
On display will be the city’s original firetruck, the city’s first flag, old city election campaign buttons, original street signs and other memorabilia from Sherwood’s 65 years, Brown said. There will even be a birthday cake with candles, he added.
“We thought a great kick-off event would be to throw a big birthday party for Sherwood,” Brown said of the commission he leads. “The city being so young has been a real advantage to us. This event is something I hope will be a real neat thing for the History and Heritage Commission.”
Special guests will be Amy Sanders, a former Sherwood city clerk for whom the city’s library is named, and Bernard Olds, one of the city’s founders, Brown said.
“We’ll be able to hear from them about how the town was created,” Brown said. “We are so young compared to Little Rock and North Little Rock.”
Sherwood began as a small farming community known as Sylvan Hills in the late 1800s, according to the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. After being incorporated as a city in 1948, a special census later the same year counted the new city’s population as 714 residents, almost evenly divided among the sexes - 352 males and 362 females. Sherwood now has about30,000 residents, Hillman said.
The first city election to establish a City Council and elect a mayor was held July 10, 1948.
But not everyone was happy with the new city life in 1949-50, Brown said.
“It was about a year after incorporation that some of the people got up a movement to change that because they didn’t like the laws, didn’t like the law and order,” Brown said.
It took until 1951 for things to settle down, he said, adding that by that time, the city had a volunteer Fire Department, a firetruck and a town newspaper also run by volunteers. The first elementary school opened in 1959.
The birthday commemoration comes at a time when some resident groups are busy fighting a recent city government action.
The city will have a special election May 14, forced by a resident group’s successful petition for a referendum over a City Council-approved contract. The election is to decide whether the city continues its agreement to have the North Little Rock Electric Department provide electricity for part of the city, or restart negotiations with it and other providers. Entergy Inc. and First Electric Cooperative also provide electricity to sections of Sherwood.
“We’re a younger city than North Little Rock, Little Rock and Jacksonville,” Hillman said. “We’re in a position to grow and there’s just a lot going on. Anytime you have growing pains you have challenges to work through.”
Two books on Sherwood’s short history have already been published, but the commission’s formation has prompted new information to come forward from residents and former residents that may someday warrant revisions or additions, Brown said. The commission has a Facebook page where information and photos about the city’s past are shown along with commission contact information.
The commission’s first effort has been to try to restore and preserve the former Roundtop Filling Station - once a popular stop between Little Rock and Searcy on a former section of U.S. 67. The city has applied for an Arkansas Historic Preservation grant of $80,000, an amount the city would have to match, that would be for the site’s restoration, Brown said. Plans are to convert the former gasoline station into a police substation, he said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 04/22/2013