There are extraordinary situations which require extraordinary interposition. An exasperated people, who feel they possess power, are not easily restrained....
—Thomas Jefferson, 1774

A crossing sign adorns the Southern Pacific right of way on Washington Street, so now we know there is a crossing there. Tualatin Valley News, Feb. 15, 1918

A sustainable vision is a vision that must be agreed upon by a vast number of people. Consensus must be reached. Sometimes consensus is reached through appropriate channels and sometimes it is not. The 1908 Sherwood Town Council probably thought it was going through proper channels when it passed Sherwood Town Ordinance Number Forty Six, making it illegal for the Southern Pacific Railway Company to permit its trains to run over our fire hoses during a fire drill. We don't know how the S.P. reacted to the Ordinance, but it's more than likely that the mega corporation had a good laugh at our expense.

And then, in the Teens, when Fred Epler doubled the size of the town by providing houses on the side of the track opposite Old Sherwood Town, it became a problem for people to navigate back and forth between their homes and the stores. A railroad crossing on Washington Street was needed, but the Southern Pacific Railway Company paid no attention to the request. There was a law governing railroad crossings, but it required group action. The citizenry had no choice but to sneak out and build a crossing of their own in the middle of the night and to spend one twenty four hour day walking back and forth across it... and the Railway Company had no choice but to install the necessary signals.

A FOOTNOTE:   In the passage quoted above, Jefferson goes on to express admiration for the Boston Tea Party of 1773. American school children often express bewilderment as to why the protestors of Boston would dress up like Indians. Was there some kind of racist slur involved? Sherwood school children, however, having observed the antics of Robin Hood and his Merry Crew during the Annual Sherwood Oregon USA Robin Hood Festival, understand at once that the Boston Tea Party was an example of what the British call the Ritual of Misrule. In England, Robin Hood is the King of Misrule. But on the eve of the rebellion against England, Americans chose to portray a different greenwood hero, the American Indian. The Ritual of Misrule allows many variations on the theme, many different heroes. It is also interesting to note that the Indians indigenous to Sherwood— the Calapuya— told stories about Coyote, the trickster who wins battles using his wits rather than his muscle. Folklorists often comment upon similarities between Coyote and Robin Hood— a hero who loses half his armed conflicts but always wins in the end. The Calapuya used to disguise themselves in deer skins and antlers during the hunt, an image familiar to Robin Hood scholars.