“It is a fine landed estate of the St. Jones Creek and was called ‘Wildcat’ from the jungle wildcat that then infested it. It was the site of an ancient Indian town and burial ground, and numerous arrowheads, axes, tomahawks…are still found upon it.”

-Scharf’s History of Delaware, 1888

Kent County Parks and Recreation

Kent County Parks and Recreation plans for the Hunn property to be a “passive recreation area” for walking and observing nature. Nature trails will at times cross over wetlands, where Eagle Scouts will install a boardwalk on part of the walk, and the plan is to eventually install an aluminum pedestrian bridge to cross a waterway, which will make a one-mile loop around an island. There are also plans for picnic tables and an observation tower, which people will be able to access when they canoe from nearby Lebanon Landing. Lebanon Landing, once a bustling commercial port, is now a county-owned park for fishing and picnicking.

The Hunn Recreation Center will one day connect to the St. Jones River Greenway, a river-side pathway to link Dover to the Delaware Bay. The state Department of Transportation has plans to build a protected pedestrian walkway on Del. 10 and a paved, 10-foot wide Greenway trail will lead into the park from the south side of Del. 10.

County administration have made parks a priority for the past 10 years. Since 2004, they have opened Browns Branch County Park in Harrington and Big Oak Park in Smyrna, and, along with the Hunn Recreation Area, acquired Lebanon Landing and the Kesselring property, the site of a planned recreation center.

Their work was accomplished in part thanks to volunteers planting trees, developing trails and cleaning up park lands.