The call came at 4:20 in the morning.
By the time the sun rose on March 20, 2002, Sherwood Restaurant & Bar was gone. The fire had taken everything — the restaurant, the Herb Shop Boutique next door, Off Broad Street Theater, the Probation Department upstairs. One hundred firefighters from twenty-five agencies worked for seventeen hours. News helicopters circled overhead all day.
What was left was a few teetering brick walls and the memories of everyone who'd ever sat at those tables.
What happened next is the part of the story worth telling.
The community of Nevada City showed up. Not in a metaphorical way — physically, visibly, impossibly. The area around the building was covered in handprints. "The Hearts and Hands of Nevada City," they called it. A symbol pressed into the ash that said: we are not done here.
Gary Tintle and Ken Baker engineered the rebuild. Greg and Rona Cook directed it. Fourteen months later, Sherwood Restaurant & Bar reopened — with a full commercial kitchen, a custom solid mahogany bar handcrafted in Arcadia by Wallace and Hinzs, two wine cellars, and something new: the Sherwood Forest Room, a fiber-optic tree and trellis installation built by local artists that has become one of the most beloved spaces in Nevada City.
The 1860 brick stayed. The music came back. And the people came back too.