Porter Park

Arthur Porter, born in Auckland, New Zealand, on April 20, 1876, came to the United States with his parents at age nine and died in Rexburg, Idaho, on December 30, 1967. He was an educator, publisher, merchant, mayor, legislator, and religious leader who spent his life as a community builder. He arrived in Rexburg in 1902 to teach at Ricks Academy, later established the Rexburg Journal newspaper and Porter’s Book Store, served for many years in the presidency of the Rexburg LDS Stake, and at one time was Superintendent of Schools for Madison County. In 1929, at the beginning of his first term as mayor, he responded to complaints about poor conditions at the local City Park, where poplar trees covered the ground with cotton in summer, irrigation was unsatisfactory, the grass was dried up, dust blew through the park, and the area was filthy. With city funds limited at the start of the Great Depression, improvements began with removing the trees and leveling the east half of the park. A local farmer contracted to remove the trees for $250, much of the leveling was done by men in the WPA program for unemployed men, civic clubs donated labor, a local plumber installed the sprinkling system at little charge, and many new shade trees came free from the state nursery. Porter also arranged tree donations from several nurseries by offering advertising in his newspaper and job printing in exchange, then donated the trees to the park and supervised their planting. By the end of his third term as mayor, tennis courts, a wading pool, and rest rooms had been built at little cost to the city, and in 1952 the city council renamed City Park as Porter Park in recognition of his planning, promotion, and development of it.

Rexburg, Idaho · United States