Gan HaShlosha National Park

Gan HaShlosha lies in the Springs Valley between Afula and Beit She'an, near Kibbutz Nir David.[1][2] The park covers approximately 136 dunams and can accommodate around 4,000 visitors at one time.[4]

The defining physical feature of the park is a series of three natural pools amid landscaped banks.[5] They are fed by a single natural spring whose water emerges from an underground fissure within the Mountain Aquifer and flows steadily throughout the year, including during droughts.[4] The water is geothermal and mineral-rich, remains at a constant 28°C (82°F) in summer and winter, and is brackish and unsuitable for irrigation.[1] The three principal water areas include a deep section reaching about five meters, a pool approximately two meters deep, and a shallow stream channel suitable for families with young children.[4]

The pools and stream are surrounded by lawns, trees, and shaded areas.[6] An accessible path runs alongside the Amal Stream, connecting bathing areas and picnic spots.[7]

Human activity at the site stretches back to the Bronze and Iron Ages, and the Romans established a textile-dyeing facility there.[1] Before the establishment of the State of Israel, flour mills operated at the site; an old Ottoman mill was powered by water descending from the natural pool and waterfall fed by Ein al-Assi.[1][8]

The modern park originated in the 1950s, when initiator and first manager Tzvi Bahir worked with landscape architects Lipa Yahalom and Dan Tzur to develop the grounds and enlarge the pool.[1][3] The National Library of Israel dates Yahalom and Tzur's landscape-planning project to 1954 and characterizes their approach as combining preservation of the natural landscape with interventions intended to create landscapes serving national values.[9]

The site opened to the public on Israel's Independence Day in 1958 and received a ceremonial opening in May 1959 in the presence of President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi.[8][3] The park is administered by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, formed in 1998 when the National Parks Authority—established by law in 1963—was united with the Nature Reserves Authority.[5]

The park carries two names reflecting its history. Sachne—also rendered Sakhne or al-Sakhne—derives from an Arabic word associated with heat, referring to the warm spring water.[1] The official Hebrew name, Gan HaShlosha ("Garden of the Three"), commemorates Haim Sturman, Aharon Atkin, and David Musinzohn.[1] The three pioneers were killed in 1938 while searching for a suitable site for a new kibbutz in the Beit She'an area.[1]

Within the park stands a full-scale reconstruction of Tel Amal, the first Stockade and Tower settlement and the origin of modern Kibbutz Nir David.[2][3] The settlement's establishment began on December 10, 1936, when pioneers previously based at nearby Kibbutz Beit Alpha erected the fortified site within a day.[2] Built amid rising attacks on Jews, Tel Amal became the model for 57 additional settlements established between 1936 and 1939.[2]

The Stockade and Tower settlements used prefabricated wooden structures surrounded by double wooden defense walls filled with gravel to withstand bullets.[2] Tel Amal's fortified area measured just 35 by 35 meters, and its central tower served as both a lookout and a communications post.[2] The reconstruction erected beside Nir David in the 1990s includes residential huts, a dining room and kitchen, a watchtower, and a wooden perimeter wall.[10][3] Period details include beds covered with mosquito netting used as protection against malaria.[2] An interactive educational center recreates aspects of settlement life, including climbing the watchtower, washing clothes with river water, building walls, and filling pails with gravel using period tools.[10]

The park's Museum of Regional and Mediterranean Archaeology was inaugurated in 1963 after archaeologist and artist Daniel Lifshitz donated his collection of ancient Etruscan artifacts.[10] The museum stands on a hill described as a biblical tel, above a Canaanite burial complex, and displays Lifshitz's Etruscan collection alongside artifacts excavated in Beit She'an and nearby areas.[10]

The holdings include a Canaanite-period beer jug, Roman-era sculptures of women's heads described as a unique find in Israel, and a pitcher bearing Hebrew writing linked to the Israelites.[10] Other exhibits include Etruscan pottery and jewelry, fifth-century BCE glass filigree, and a roughly 1,000-year-old tunic attributed to a Coptic priest.[10]

Infrastructure work beneath the park's pools exposed five parallel openings carved into soft tufa rock along the Amal Stream.[11] A multidisciplinary team led by Professor Amos Frumkin used uranium-thorium dating of stalactites formed after the tunnels were excavated, placing their construction in the late Mamluk period. The dating corresponds to the 14th and 15th centuries, when the Beit She'an Valley was a major center of sugarcane cultivation and export.[11]

Researchers interpret the tunnels as water channels that likely harnessed the spring flow to drive horizontal paddle wheels and millstones used to crush sugarcane.[11] Their slope, flow traces, and location support sugar production rather than grain milling, while a Mamluk-era oil lamp found at a nearby mill helped confirm the dating. The sugar mills were later converted to grind flour during the Ottoman period.[11] A historic flour mill beside the waterline, founded during the Mamluk period about 600 years ago, was close to collapse before a three-month conservation project rebuilt its foundations and restored it nearly to working order.[12]

In April 2024, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority announced that Gan HaShlosha would become a "green park" beginning in July 2024. The plan called for reduced pesticide spraying and waste, a ban on barbecues, and continuation of the site's "quiet park" policy prohibiting amplified music.[6] The changes followed visitor complaints that smoke and litter detracted from the experience and that waste attracted nuisance species.[6]

Amenities include an accessible stream-side path, picnic areas, a settlement-bells garden, the restored flour mill, the Tel Amal reconstruction, and the archaeology museum.[3][7] The wider Gan HaShlosha and Nir David complex also includes Gan Garoo Park Australia-Israel.[2] Maariv reported that TIME included Gan HaShlosha among the world's ten most beautiful man-made water sites, while a Ynet report called it one of the "wonders of the world"; the precise designation remains unclear.[6][4]