RATCHFORD/FUOCO HOUSE
Joseph Ratchford built this wood frame one storey house with its distinctive round windows and door in 1908. Ratchford came to Kamloops in the 1870s as a packer and guide for the Canadian Pacific Railway surveyors. In the 1880s, he ran the Kamloops House and the Cosmopolitan Hotel in downtown Kamloops. The versatile Ratchford was also superintendent of the Provincial Home for Old Men. He was responsible for opening the span on the old Red Bridge so steamers could pass up and down the river. It was perhaps this job that inspired Ratchford to build his house on the outer reaches of town. Ratchford operated two stores on Lorne Street of which this house was store and home.
Not many years after, he sold the house to Benjamin and Clelia Fuoco. He became a well-known businessman and they ran a grocery store and bakery here until 1923. Numerous Italian families resided on Lorne Street and it became known as ''Little Italy'' in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Generations of Fuoco family members lived here.
Source: Kamloops Heritage Commission