3. The Great Fires.

What author Stephen Ambrose said about American railroads can be said about American railroad towns. "In America it was common practice to get the road open for traffic in the cheapest manner possible, and in the least possible time. The attitude was, It can be fixed up and improved later, and paid for with the earnings." So it was with Old Sherwood Town. No one except the town's doctors, who had to deal with cholera and typhoid fever on an almost daily basis, seemed terribly alarmed by the appalling public health issues that will plague a town when it allows house holders to install wells and privies side by side on the same lot. Along with health issues, tinder dry frame buildings featuring wood burning stoves had a way of catching on fire. Sherwood's Great Fire of June 1, 1895 followed a disease epidemic serious enough to be mentioned in the Town Minutes (In one instance, our typically generous Town Fathers balk at paying a woman for nursing a man that they seem

Contractor Discusses Rebuild with Schamburg and VanDolah.

to have placed in her care). The fire began in a chimney in a store and wiped out all the businesses on Railroad Street between Washington and Main. The blaze was driven by a strong North wind, which not only caused the boardwalk (a notorious fire hazard in any town) to catch fire, but sent flames across the street to the newly constructed train depot, destroying it. We are not surprised to learn that there was no fire department or equipment in those days, save for some ladders (displayed with great pride on Election Day) which the Town had lent someone who forgot to return them.

The same block was struck by fire in the 1950s. According to the press: "A fire, probably as destructive as any of previous years, occurred in April, 1950, when the quarter block of frame buildings at Railroad and Washington streets was wiped out. The property laid bare by that fire has been covered by substantial buildings erected by Elgin Schamburg and N.L.VanDolah. In November of the same year, another corner of the same block on First and Washington streets was destroyed by fire. The bank building and parking lot now occupy that site." On February 24, 1952, "the third fire in the same block, in less than two years, broke out in the UDL grocery, operated in the Korb frame building adjoining the post office. The building was a complete loss, but the post office suffered very little.."