In the 1930s, the municipality of
Nijmegen began developing } of woodland and heathland into a park with a sports field, a stadium, a teahouse, and a zoo. The design for the park was created by J.H. Schmidt and D. Monshouwer. Mayor J. A.H. Steinweg insisted on constructing it as part of the unemployment relief program to manage construction costs, and as such, it was one of many Dutch projects implemented as part of job creation efforts during the economic crisis at the time, which had high unemployment. Because it was a job creation project, no machines were allowed—everything had to be done by hand. Work started in the spring of 1935 with one-hundred-sixty unemployed individuals employed to work in the park, earning a fee of 35 cents per hour. Despite utilizing the land's natural slope, approximately of sand had to be excavated. Most of the work was done manually with shovels and wheelbarrows, with the most challenging task being digging a pit for the stadium, famously known as "
the bloedkuul" (the blood pit). The park was completed just before World War II, in 1939, and was officially opened on July 8 of that year by
Prince Bernhard. ==Present status==