Pioneer Square Park

Pioneer Square is a .1 acre open space (some is planted and some is hard-spaced) bordered by Nicol and Victoria Crescent adjacent to the Old Firehall.

Vancouver Coal Company gave the land to the City of Nanaimo in 1895 for a new fire hall. Once the hall was relocated in the 1960s, the park use expanded and the road intersections were redesigned. The park was landscaped in the 1980s.

Pioneer Square was dedicated by the Nanaimo Pioneer’s society on July 25, 1938. They placed a cairn on the site that reads “Erected to the Memory of our Pioneers 1938”.

Pioneer Square was built near the entrance to the New Douglas Mine which opened to connect to the No. 1 Esplanade Mine in 1881. These mines collected coal from the Douglas Seam and the Newcastle Seam. The shafts went south underneath the Old Firehall. The old mine shaft caved during the 1960s.