Anacostia Park became a longtime neighborhood oasis after Congress in 1914 directed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to improve the Anacostia River by scraping soil from the river bed and depositing it into the marshy flats along the banks, both to eliminate mosquito-breeding ground and to create new land for parks, and construction on the park began in 1923. George C. Havenner of the Anacostia Citizens Association later praised the setting as a grand park before hillside homes, but the park also became the scene of hardship and conflict. In the summer of 1932, during the Great Depression, about 15,000 World War I veterans and their families known as the Bonus Army camped there as part of a larger group seeking early payment of a bonus due in 1945; after Congress tabled the request, President Hoover ordered the U.S. Army to clear the camp, and troops drove people out, burned their shelters, injured many, and a child died. Violence returned in 1949 when the Department of the Interior desegregated the park swimming pool, which since 1937 had been restricted to white patrons, and hostile reactions to African American swimmers led officials to close the pool for the summer. In the mid-1960s, construction of the Anacostia Freeway along the park's edge took away a favorite neighborhood vista.
