Your Sherwood Summer: Where the Fourth Actually Happens This Year, and What Else Is Worth Your Calendar

The city's biggest fireworks show used to belong to Sherwood Forest at 1111 West Maryland Avenue. This year, if you show up there on the Fourth expecting bounce houses and food trucks, you'll find an empty park. The show has moved to Thursday, July 3, and it's happening a mile east on a golf course fairway. That single detail rewrites how a lot of Sherwood households will plan the holiday, and it's the tip of a broader pattern: the summer center of gravity in Sherwood has shifted toward the Highway 107 and Warden Road corridor, with a golf course, a former chain-restaurant space, and a set of civic venues doing most of the work.

The Fourth of July That Isn't on the Fourth

The 2026 Sherwood Independence Day Celebration lands on Friday, July 3, at The Greens at North Hills, 7400 North Hills Blvd, with festivities beginning at 6 p.m., food trucks, live music, a free Kids Zone, and fireworks at dark (approximately 9:15 p.m.). It's free. That's the version residents actually need to remember.

A few practical notes that come from the city's own guidance for this event:

City personnel will be directing traffic to the complimentary parking areas on the golf course fairway, with additional parking in empty lots near the golf course, and the Sherwood Police Department does not recommend parking across Highway 107 or North Hills and attempting to walk across those streets. If you end up at an outer lot, the city's guidance is to stay put and enjoy the fireworks where you parked, or only walk where sidewalks and crosswalks are available.

If you want closer seats without fighting for a fairway spot, the Balcony Blast fundraiser at The Greens supports the Sherwood Fire Department and Camp Aldersgate, per Little Rock Soirée's Fourth of July coverage. It's the same fireworks, from a chair, with a cause attached.

One more thing worth naming here. The traditional description of the city celebration used to feature Sherwood Forest as the home of the annual Fourth of July celebration with free food and drinks and the best fireworks display in Central Arkansas. Word-of-mouth still points people there. It shouldn't this year. Send that link to whichever neighbor you know will otherwise drive to Maryland Avenue and wonder where everyone went.

What's Actually New on the Warden Road Corridor

If you've driven past the old On the Border building at 6000 Warden Road for the last couple of years and watched it sit dark, that stretch is finally back in play. Takumi AYCE Sushi & Hibachi has opened in the former On the Border space at 6000 Warden Road, where North Little Rock meets Sherwood, with a wide range of sushi, appetizer, soup, hot plate, hibachi, rice, noodle and dessert options, open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. The model is all-you-can-eat: order from the menu, staff bring small portions until you tap out. It's the same format as Mizuki on Chenal, if you've been over there.

That corridor already anchors a decent chunk of Sherwood dining. Locals lean on Ropers Restaurant, The Rail Yard, Rivera Italian Restaurant, Two Sisters Café, Cheng's Garden, Zuki Hana, and Mama's Gyros Grill across the Warden and Kiehl side of town, and Takumi filling a long-empty pad slot is the kind of thing that changes how a Friday night gets planned without anyone announcing it.

The Rest of the Summer Calendar, in the Order It Actually Matters

Sherwood's summer isn't only one holiday. A few things worth blocking off:

Local 4756 Cornhole Tournament at Sherwood Forest. The Local 4756 2nd Annual Cornhole Tournament presented by Frosty Factory takes place at Sherwood Forest, 1111 W. Maryland Ave, starting at noon. If you've been wondering what happens at Sherwood Forest now that the fireworks have moved, this is one answer. Bring a folding chair.

CALS – Sanders Library. The Sherwood branch of the Central Arkansas Library System runs a rotating summer schedule of story times and family programming. Move and Groove with a Story runs mornings at 10:30 a.m. at 10200 Johnson Drive, and Central Arkansas Bonsai Society meetings and other adult programming rotate through the same building. It's the kind of building where a rainy July afternoon gets salvaged if you check the calendar before it hits.

The Bill Harmon Recreation Center and the parks. Sherwood's stated recreation footprint is bigger than most residents actually use. Seventeen community parks and recreational facilities offer walking and running tracks, playgrounds, pools, tennis courts, and fishing in area lakes, and the Bill Harmon Recreation Center adds a gymnasium, walking track, Olympic-sized pool, and exercise equipment. If you have out-of-town family stopping through and the fireworks aren't quite enough to fill a weekend, the indoor pool is a summer safety valve that a lot of residents forget about until August.

Regional sports weekends. The Sherwood Sports Complex on Bear Paw Road hosts regional and national baseball and softball league tournaments through the spring and summer, along with middle school and high school baseball games and soccer leagues. If your street feels heavier with out-of-state plates on a Saturday, this is usually why.

The Fall Calendar Is Already Set

Two Sherwood events are worth putting in the phone now, because the tickets, traffic, or timing will surprise you if you wait:

• Sherwood Fest. The city's largest annual festival, run out of the Sherwood Sports Complex.
• Enchanted Forest Trail of Lights. A drive-through Christmas light experience, with the entrance located at the Sherwood Sports Complex, 511 Bear Paw Road. Per the 2026 Arkansas Festival Guide, it runs from late November through mid-December in weekly rotations alongside the state's other major holiday light events. If you host family in December, this is the local answer to "what do we do tonight" that doesn't involve driving to Little Rock.

The through-line, if it's not obvious yet: the Sherwood Sports Complex is doing a lot of quiet work as a civic venue. It hosts summer baseball tournaments, the flagship fall festival, and the biggest winter drive-through in the city. If you live nearby, that's a traffic pattern to know. If you don't, it's a reason to keep an eye on how the roads around Bear Paw move in October, November, and December.

One More Thing Worth Knowing

Sherwood is building. The city recently held a ribbon cutting ceremony for its new $12.6 million public works complex, which includes police and fire training facilities. That's not summer programming, but it's the kind of civic investment that residents feel in small ways over the following year: response times, staffing, the look of the corridors near the training facilities. Worth noting the next time someone asks whether Sherwood is putting money back into itself.

The Short Version

The Fourth of July is on the 3rd, at The Greens at North Hills, not at Sherwood Forest. The old On the Border is now Takumi. The sports complex is running the fall and winter. The rec center pool is still one of the most underused summer amenities in the city. That's what changed. Everything else is the Sherwood you already know.

If you're thinking beyond the summer calendar and toward a move within Sherwood or a first home in Central Arkansas, Caleigh Dumas brings a calm, education-first approach to buyers and sellers across Cabot, Sherwood, Jacksonville, Maumelle, and the surrounding communities. Let's connect.