allowed them to purchase five pieces of new playground equipment that were installed in July 2024

allowed them to purchase five pieces of new playground equipment that were installed in July 2024.

Foster Land Office Deeper in the heart of Willard, along Main Street, sits the 1908 Foster Land Office. The building was restored around the same time Settler’s Park was being founded in the early 2000s. It still stands as a piece of the settlement’s history, with photographs and an original pot-bellied stove and other historical items inside. A placard on the exterior names the building along with Ignac Cesnik, who was the first settler of the area and founder of Willard who served as a department agent in the area. The shelter in question served as a land office in the area and as a temporary shelter for many of the early settlers who passed through.

“In 1908 Mr. Cesnik engaged with the Foster Lumber Company to come to Clark County and develop the section around what is now the village of Willard, though there was then no village there,” reads an article about Cesnik from the Clark County History Buffs. “He arrived on a hand-car on the Fairchild & North Eastern Railroad and at once set to work to start immigration to this locality. The result of his efforts is a now prosperous community, with stores, a cheese factory and other profitable industries, giving employment to a growing population. His work has been truly beneficial to this part of the county and he is a man held in high respect.”

Although now Willard is not as bustling of a town as it once was, the heritage of the small community will continued to be remembered for years to come. As the Willard motto written by Ann Collier states inside the kozolec shelter: “Let us hold fast to all that which is good, and not be wearing in well doing.”