The building at 2408 Wills Street sits behind a stretch of industrial road that most people driving River Road never notice. On a Saturday afternoon, the door is locked. On most Sundays, it's locked too. The Wills Sainte Claire Automobile Museum, home to the largest collection of Wills cars in the world, opens its doors on the second Sunday of the month from September through May, and adds a fourth Sunday in June, July, and August. Show up on the wrong weekend and you're looking at a locked door and a parking lot, nothing more.
That schedule sounds like a footnote. It isn't. It's the reason a full day along Marysville's riverfront doesn't happen the same way twice. Most weekends, the riverfront is a walk, a beach, maybe a meal. One Sunday a month, it's something else entirely, because the one piece of local history that requires planning finally lines up with everything else that's always there.
A Museum That Runs on Its Own Calendar
The museum was formed in 2001 by a group of antique automobile enthusiasts who wanted to preserve the story of C. Harold Wills, the metallurgical engineer who served as Henry Ford's right-hand man before striking out on his own. Wills helped design the early Ford Model T, introduced vanadium steel to large-scale auto production, and is credited with the script Ford Blue Oval logo still used today. When he left Ford with a severance of more than a million and a half dollars, he built his own company on the banks of the St. Clair River and named it for himself and the water beside it. The Wills Sainte Claire rolled off the line in Marysville from 1921 to 1927, and the goose logo he chose for the brand still shows up on merchandise around town.
The current hours are:
- September through May: second Sunday of the month, 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
- June, July, and August: second and fourth Sunday, 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
That's it. No weekday hours, no first or third Sunday backup. A volunteer-run museum keeps a volunteer-run schedule, and the collection, eleven restored cars on display out of roughly eighty known to survive worldwide, is worth building a day around when the calendar cooperates.
The Riverwalk Doesn't Wait for the Museum
Everything else along the river runs on a different clock: it's simply there, every day, regardless of what the museum is doing. The riverwalk itself stretches about a mile along the St. Clair River, connecting Veterans Park in the north to Marysville City Park and Chrysler Beach. Veterans Park has a short boardwalk and an ADA accessible kayak and canoe launch. Just south of the Marysville Golf Course, a 2.7-acre living shoreline uses aquatic plants and cobble to give fish a place to spawn, part of a shoreline stabilization effort that also happens to make for a good stretch of walking.
Marysville City Park itself covers 58 acres and holds the kind of infrastructure that turns a walk into an afternoon: a splash pad, several playgrounds, baseball diamonds, covered pavilions, and a restored Detroit Edison train engine and coal car that kids climb on. Mermaid Park, a smaller stop on Gratiot, gives anglers stairs down to a boardwalk for fishing access. Morton Park, on Busha Highway, adds a skate and bike park, a fitness court, and a direct connection to the Bridge-to-Bay Trail, the 50-mile regional trail that threads through a dozen St. Clair County communities.
None of that requires a second Sunday. It's the baseline. The museum is the one variable that turns an ordinary riverfront walk into a planned outing, because it's the only piece of the day that isn't available whenever you happen to show up.
Summer Ran on a Different Clock, Too
For a few months a year, there was a third layer to the calendar. The city's Music in the Park series brought live music to 867 E Huron Blvd on Wednesday evenings through the summer, with the Stone Blossoms closing out the run on September 16. That series is finished for the season now. The Wednesday-night rhythm that stacked on top of the daily riverwalk and the monthly museum Sunday has dropped out, which means the riverfront's late September pace is quieter than it was three weeks ago, closer to the walk-and-fish routine that will carry through the fall.
Winter brings its own addition. The city sets up two lighted outdoor ice rinks across the street from 200 E 14th Street, with benches and a fire pit, for skating and pickup hockey once the weather turns. It's not a riverfront amenity in the strict sense, but it's the same pattern: a seasonal layer that gets added to the baseline and then taken away again, the way the Wednesday concerts just were.
Where the Day Ends
A day that includes the museum tends to end with a meal, and Marysville doesn't lack for options within a few minutes of the water. The Fieldhouse Sports Bar & Kitchen, on Gratiot Boulevard, keeps 24 beers on tap and a patio with cornhole boards for anyone who wants to stretch the afternoon into evening. On the same corridor, 1195 Gastropub is the only gastropub in St. Clair County, running a menu that stretches from pizza and burgers to beef Wellington and herb-crusted fillet. Junction Buoy and Pelican Cafe both show up consistently in local reviews for breakfast and lunch. Four Star Grille has been serving Marysville and Port Huron for more than 48 years, long enough to have outlasted several versions of whatever else was on that stretch of road.
None of these are new. That's part of the point. The riverfront day in Marysville isn't built around discovery, it's built around timing, knowing which Sunday puts the museum's doors open at the same time the walk, the beach, and the dinner are already waiting.
What This Means for the Rest of the Month
Every other Sunday, the day is simpler by design. The walk is still there. The beach is still there. The golf course still runs its 18 holes along the river with Cuttle Creek winding through the layout. But the one piece of local history that turns a walk into an event stays locked, and there's no way around that except checking the calendar first. That's the actual shape of a Marysville weekend: mostly the same walk, occasionally something more, and the difference comes down to which Sunday it is.
If you're weighing what it's actually like to spend time in Marysville day to day, not just what a listing says about it, the Marysville neighborhood page has more on the area. For anything beyond that, Lisa Glombowski is always glad to talk through what living along this stretch of the St. Clair River actually looks like, second Sundays included.
