Richloam Museum Groundbreaking

On Saturday, ground was broken in East Hernando on the land of the historic Richloam General Store. Eric Burkes, who owns and operates the establishment with his family, invited the community to come out to witness the start of the Richloam Museum. When completed, it will be a multi-building complex mirroring the property’s layout from decades past. Festivities such as live music and inflatable slides were on hand for families to enjoy, and all the proceeds from Saturday’s event will be going towards the project.

Just before the groundbreaking, various Richloam directors and family members were given commemorative shovels that they used to move the loamy soil that morning. Jim Ward (Burkes’ cousin), Donna (his wife), Director of Richloam and Pioneer Museums Wayne Sweat, Tim Hill, Daisy (his mother and manager), and County Commissioner Beth Narverud moved the first shovelfuls of earth shortly thereafter. The commissioner, Burkes noted, “is our best supporter that we have on the board of county commissioners.”

Narverud, who is a fellow small business owner of 35 years, offered some kind words on Saturday.
“When another small businessperson comes to me and asks me for help with getting a marker or doing anything, I think it’s our obligation as fellow business owners and as your commissioner to help that happen. I’m so impressed with what I see out here and honestly, I think the timing is just so perfect because […] we’re all looking for a better day, a better time in our world. When I walk up here, this is what I feel like: I feel like I’m taking a step back in time, and I love it, because I love the simple life.”

The property has remained in the family’s hands to this day and, as Burkes put it, “I’ve mowed the same patch of grass my entire life.” The Richloam General Store, which was founded in 1922 by Eric’s great uncle Sidney “Sid” Brinson, served as the express office, post office, and general store for the community of Richloam. After being heavily damaged in a fire in 1928, it was rebuilt, and the structure that now stands is the renovated original building from 1928. The structure served as a general store and post office for the community of Richloam until 1936.

According to Burkes, this changed when the government began buying up properties in the area. This resulted in people moving away and the post office closing. His great-uncle then decided to rent it out for housing until about 1955. There it stood vacant for just over six decades until 2016 when Burkes refurbished and reopened the store. The establishment was later named to the National Register for Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior in 2017.

After all these years, the general store is once again open for business, but that was only the first step of Eric’s revitalization project. The goal for the museum is to build everything exactly as it was “tree for tree and building for building,” said Burkes. The grounds once included the store, a kitchen, an icehouse, a smoke house, a train depot, a chicken coop, a packing house, a tool shed, and an outhouse, and they will again.

So how did this plan come into place? When the family restored the building, they turned the living quarters into a sign shop before making the establishment a general store when demand grew too great. The seeds of the full restoration project were sown almost four years ago when Burkes convinced his wife, Donna, to let him move their house “down the road” and turn the one-acre property into a museum.
Burkes had originally torn everything down due to termites and decay, so he has intimate knowledge of how everything was constructed and placed. He noted that the first buildings of the project to be remade will be an old-fashioned “wood-cook stove kitchen, and we [will] hire some grandmas to cook.

Whatever’s being served in the pot that day is going to be what’s the menu.” The same kind of care and devotion to tradition will be carried out throughout the museum grounds. The project’s slogan is “Remembering Old Florida” after all.