Before the fire.

Before the Hayward Building.

Before the Walker Hotel.

Before the Giblin Hotel.

There was the Pion Hotel.

Built in the late 1800s, it stood right here at the corner of Main and Highway 63, one of Hayward’s earliest landmarks. Double gables standing proud, the Pion welcomed foresters and tradespeople who were carving out new lives in the Northwoods. It was a starting point, and like so many early buildings, it eventually gave way to the next chapter.

This week, as excavation crews cleared the site for The Lumber Exchange, we uncovered what appears to be the Pion’s original foundation. A thick boulder wall, still perfectly intact, waiting just beneath the surface. Around it were bricks from later decades, likely laid during the construction of the Giblin, the Walker, and finally, the Hayward Building. Each structure rising from the last, layer by layer, story by story.

The moment we uncovered the old boulder wall was quiet and powerful. There it was, perfectly intact after more than a century, waiting just beneath the surface. And when we picked up those rocks, still marked with soot and soil, it felt like we were holding the weight of a hundred years in our hands.

We have always known this site held history. We just did not expect to find so much of it still here.

To make way for new solid footings, the boulder wall and bricks will need to be removed, but they will not be lost. We’ll be preserving them and giving them a place in the new building, not as relics from another time, but as reminders of everything this ground has carried.

Because this corner has always held more than stone and soil. It has held ambition, resilience, and a long lineage of people who believed this place was worth building on.

That belief is still here.

The past didn’t vanish. It waited patiently, ready to become part of what comes next.

Now it is our turn.

As we begin, we keep thinking about the people who came before us. The ones who built with bare hands and bold vision. Who risked everything to start businesses, open their doors, serve a meal, sell a room, or light the storefront windows on a cold winter night. They shaped not just this corner, but the entire spirit of Hayward’s Main Street. Their work was quiet and constant, often without recognition, but it laid the groundwork for everything we are doing now.

We are not building alone. We are standing on the shoulders of people who saw potential in this place long before we did. Those who chose to invest their time, energy, and imagination here. That legacy is not just something we admire. It is something we feel responsible to carry forward.

When this new chapter is written in brick and steel, we hope it carries their strength, their vision, and their quiet belief in what this place could be.