During one of my many travels this summer, I ran across the utterly adorable village of Willard. Okay, maybe the town itself wasn’t so cute . . .
But they had a very nice little community park. Settlers Park. Built with mostly historic materials from local abandoned houses, barns and schools. Signs near every structure telling where it had come from. So, I spent probably too much time and took too many pictures.
Perhaps the most prominent structure in Settlers Park is the kozolec, which is Slovakian for hayrack. A freestanding vertical drying rack with a roof, it was usually made of wood and would be used to dry fodder for animals, mostly hay and other food stuffs such as field corn.
The barn boards used for this kozolec, which was built solely for entertainment purposes, are from the Frank and Mary Volk’s homestead. They moved to the Willard area in 1909, two years after the community was founded.
In the late 1990s, residents of the community began talking about what they wanted to do for the one hundredth anniversary of Willard in 2007. With an amazing amount of work from the handful of citizens, a historical society was formed, followed by the creation of Settler’s Park.
There wasn’t much else in this unincorporated town – a community center, catholic church, post office, two bars and an auto repair shop. I couldn’t find its population anywhere. But the Hendren township, where Willard resides, along with an even smaller berg named Tioga, boasts 500 residents in its 36 square miles of land.
Websites with the sparse
information I found online on Willard and Settlers Park:
https://www.wiclarkcountyhistory.org/hendren/community/Centennial.htm
https://www.wiclarkcountyhistory.org/hendren/history/2Willard.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendren,_Wisconsin
https://www.wiclarkcountyhistory.org/hendren/index.htm
https://www.wiclarkcountyhistory.org/hendren/history/index.htm
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| This bovine was the only sign of life in the park that day. Can you make out the inscription on her leg? |
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