Willard: Rock Homes on the Wasatch Shore
Near Ogden, Utah
Willard, Utah began in the fall of eighteen fifty-one, when a company of Mormon settlers sent south from Salt Lake City staked out land along a creek on the western slope of the Wasatch Range. They called the settlement North Willow Creek. A few years later they moved the community two miles south to a better site, keeping the same name.
In eighteen fifty-nine the town was renamed Willard, in honor of Willard Richards, an Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who had recently died and who had served as a counselor to Brigham Young. Many of the founding settlers were Welsh, English, Scottish, and Dutch converts to the faith. Their industry is still visible: more than thirty pioneer-era stone homes built from local rock still stand in Willard, many listed on the National Register of Historic Places, making the town one of the better-preserved early Utah communities.
