William H. Hatten Recreation Park lies south of the Wolf River at the western edge of the city of New London (Waupaca County). It represents the efforts of residents to improve the city’s setting and to create public parks for recreation. Hatten Park is also an excellent example of a ‘recreational facility’ park, overlaid with a Prairie Style interior drive and trail system designed by noted landscape architect Franz A. Aust. In addition, extensive areas of woods and wetlands in the 120-acre park are maintained as a nature preserve, an unusual feature in a 1930s municipal park. The New London Department of Parks & Recreation has offered programming in Hatten Park since 1937, including swimming lessons and meets (until 1980), tennis lessons and tournaments, as well as softball and basketball. Since 1936, New Londoners have picnicked, walked, run and biked in park, played pick-up team sports, and gone ice-skating and sledding there. Snowmobiling and cross-country skiing are current options. A range of community events have taken place in the park, such as Badger Amateur Baseball Association games, high school football and baseball matches, and the Fourth of July celebration.

Hatten Recreation Park is also significant because it was developed as a relief project under the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The site of the park itself was selected because of its large size and the labor-intensive work its transformation into a park would require, putting the greatest number of New London men on relief to work for the longest period of time. From November 1935 until 1942, unemployed New London men filled and graded the park site, including the baseball and softball fields; excavated the lagoon; erected two and one-half miles of stone wall on the park boundary as well as two stone entrances; laid out and surfaced the interior drive and the trail system; and built a bath house, a shelter, and Hatten Memorial Stadium. The stadium has hosted baseball games since 1942 and remains the home field of the local Badger Amateur Baseball Association team, the New London Irish. Hatten Park is open to the public.