At the Kent County Tourism Awards Luncheon, held on May 6 at King Cole Farms in Dover, Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge was named Attraction of the Year. Suzanne Savory, Director of the Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs, presented the award at the luncheon.
“This attraction has a footprint that stretches over eight miles along the Delaware Bay and covers over 16,000 acres,” Savory said. “It provides a key habitat for a plethora of wildlife in central Delaware and sees over 125,000 visitors each year. It offers visitors a 12-mile wildlife drive, seven walking trails, three observation towers, and a variety of nature-based educational programs.”
Savory stated that they had recently opened the Thomas R. Carper Visitor Center, which highlights all the refuge has to offer.
Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1937 as a link in the chain of refuges extending across the country. It is a breeding ground for migrating birds and other wildlife, and the importance of the refuge has grown as high-quality habitat has been lost along the Atlantic Flyway.
The refuge is a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance with portions designated for research. Nationally recognized as one of the top birding spots in the country, it is also designated as a Globally Important Bird Area. The refuge, as is all of Delaware, is part of the New England/Mid-Atlantic Coast Bird Conservation Region Implementation Plan.
Bombay Hook has another distinction in history. After the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal was designed to pull the United States out of an economic crisis. One of the programs in the New Deal was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which consisted of young men between 18 and 25 who were assigned tasks related to conservation.
Although the program was federal, segregation still existed during this era. In 1938, Delaware’s first all-black CCC group, known as Company 3269-C, settled in Leipsic in 1938. The group was assigned to create a wildlife refuge that would become a breeding area for ducks and other migratory birds.
The work was not easy as the men dug out brackish, mucky marshland, most of it by hand, in waist-deep water. This work was messy, required brute strength, and the daily inhaling of the overwhelming smell of marshland.
The project was completed in four years with the men digging freshwater ponds, cutting mosquito ditches, planting over 50,000 trees, constructing a headquarters building, a boathouse, a railway, an observation tower, and housing. Company 3269-C was disbanded in 1942 after the start of World War II, as many of the members left to join the war effort.
