In January 1921, the Wausau Kiwanis Club received its charter from Kiwanis International.
In 1922, Kiwanis purchased 120
acres of land on the top of Rib Mountain and deeded it over to the State of Wisconsin to develop a State Park. Interest by
the club in this land has been an ongoing thing since that time. One of the very early efforts to help in the community was to provide money for the purchase of band uniforms for
Wausau High School.
Over the years, the main emphasis of the Kiwanis Club of Wausau has been on children. In those early
years, there were a number of programs and projects aimed at helping the "Underprivileged youth". This was prior to all of
the Federal government handouts and included the depression years. One of the longest ongoing projects started in 1923 was
a dental clinic doing actual reconstruction work on needy children's teeth. Although modified in form, Kiwanis is still involved
annually in a dental health program for children.
One of our clubs larger single projects was undertaken in 1975 when
we worked with the Wausau School District to help fund a new home for a caretaker at the Wausau School Forest. The Kiwanis
Club of Wausau pledged about $9,000 for materials. The home was dedicated in June of 1976 to Walter G. Roehl (Kiwanis Club
of Wausau President in 1940 and long time Secretary of the Club).
In recent years, we have added
a number of new service projects. Among them are Coats for Kids where we sponsor
the collection, cleaning and free distribution of the coats to kids from needy families.
To finish where we began brings us back to Rib Mountain where our most recent involvement there involves
a continuing development of trail, expansion of trails has been going on for the last couple of years stimulated by a relatively
new group called the "Friends of Rib Mountain". Kiwanis was the biggest single donor to the recently completed four miles
($14,000) South Mountain Trail.
