The history of the Sheridan Fire Department starts on January 5, 1915. The Village of Sheridan purchased its first piece of fire equipment on this date. It was a chemical powered fire extinguisher mounted on a two wheel cart. The cart, along with hose, buckets, and additional chemical propellants was pulled by a volunteer force of firefighters. As one can imagine, the men often arrived on the scene completely out of breath from manually moving the equipment. Thus, the unit was monuted on a Ford truck.

In the 1950’s the village purchased a new truck with a 300 GPM pump, 400 gallon tank, hose bed, ladders, and storage compartments. Thus, a true fire modern fire truck. At the same time, the department constructed a 1200 gallon tanker truck to aid with fire suppression.

In 1972, the district purchased a Chevrolet panel truck and converted it into an ambulance. At this time, the firemen were trained as Emergency Medical Technicians. Thus, the department was now able to treat and transport patients to a hospital instead of using area undertakers for that service.

With more vehicles now owned by the district, more room was needed to park them. Some trucks at this time were parked at firefighters homes.

In 2000, the LaSalle County Sheriffs Department started dispatching calls for the department. Previous to this switch, the department operated with a fire phone system for over 50 years. This system was placed into 10-15 homes of firefighters and when a call came in hopefully someone was home to answer the phone. With the county dispatching the calls, they can take the information and then page all firefighters with relavent information.

In 2003, the trustees of the district decided that there was a need to staff the station with two EMT’s during daytime hours. The hours covered was from 8am-4pm. Today the hours have been extended to 7am-7pm every day of the week.