On September 1, A.D. 1894, between three and five o’clock in the afternoon, a forest fire swept over central Pine County, devastating four hundred square miles of country, consuming the villages of Hinckley, Sandstone, Mission Creek, and Brook Park, and destroying more than four hundred and eighteen human lives. Four hundred and eighteen men, women, and children perished in the Great Hinckley forest fire, and in four trenches north of the monument lie the remains of two hundred and forty eight men, women, and children, residents of Hinckley, who died in the fire. The dead were remembered as pioneers of civilization in the forests of Minnesota.