During the Great Depression of the 1930's, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration, whose workers built limestone projects at Fort Belle Fontaine from 1936-1940 to enhance the Missouri Hills Home estate and attract visitors to the landscape. In the 1940's the site became a popular place for picnicking and swimming during hot St. Louis summers, with retaining walls, trails, stone bridges and culverts, comfort stations, barbecue pits, landscape gardens, a gazebo, a grand staircase, and lily ponds, all built from limestone quarried on the site. The area also featured trees such as American basswood, bur oak, and chinkapin oak, valued by wildlife and used by Native Americans for materials, food, and medicine. Archaeological evidence from the Coldwater Creek watershed shows human occupation for at least 10,000 years, with 13 prehistoric Indian sites recorded there, and at the time of European contact the area was frequently occupied by Native Americans. Conflicts continued through the 18th century between Native Americans and early European settlers, and the Shawnee village called Village a Robert remained as late as 1804, probably the last Native American settlement in the area. On August 10, 1805, General Wilkinson reported that troops were encamped at Cold Water near a fountain of pure water sufficient to supply one thousand men daily, where they were working on the cantonment and gathering materials for the factory building.