The downtown property now occupied by Pioneer Park was originally home to one of Burns Lake's first hardware stores. Jim Hatch, a local carpenter who also served as the area's first road foreman for the Department of Highways, constructed the two-storey building for R. G. Stearns, a local entrepreneur who had previously worked for the railroad laying ties for 12 cents a piece.
The Stearns family arrived in Burns Lake by rail. Jim McKenna met them at the station with a kerosene lantern and a wheelbarrow to convey their luggage to his lodgings. Mr. Stearns put up a tarpaper shack while he built a home on what is now the corner of Fifth and Center streets. His hardware store was for a time one of the finest buildings on Burns Lake's crooked Main Street. The Stearns family later moved to Tintagel and sold the store to Harry Jewell, another railway worker, who operated a grocery business out of it. It later became part of the Burns Lake Cash and Delivery store.
The Stearns family arrived in Burns Lake by rail. Jim McKenna met them at the station with a kerosene lantern and a wheelbarrow to convey their luggage to his lodgings. Mr. Stearns put up a tarpaper shack while he built a home on what is now the corner of Fifth and Center streets. His hardware store was for a time one of the finest buildings on Burns Lake's crooked Main Street. The Stearns family later moved to Tintagel and sold the store to Harry Jewell, another railway worker, who operated a grocery business out of it. It later became part of the Burns Lake Cash and Delivery store.
