Top photo: The Rexburg Nature Park in the fall, by Kaatia Larsen.

By Dallin Saurey

REXBURG—Rexburg’s Nature Park was created to allow joggers and cyclists some backwoods scenery. It also provides wonderful opportunities like fishing for rainbow trout, yellow perch, carp, and channel catfish. You can go fishing year-round at the Nature Park. They even have a pond for kids that are 12 and under.

The variety of trees permits the occasion to bird watch, or see different kinds of birds, and even see osprey during the summer trying their own fishing techniques.

The nature trails in our Nature Park cover about 15 acres and include three ponds, a canal, frisbee golf, and a leash-less dog park. They have a skate park where people ride their skateboards, scooters, and sometimes their bikes.

The Rexburg City council has plans to put in some new playground equipment in the spring of 2022.

I spoke to Bryanna Smith Johnson from the Rexburg City Council. She said, “I am always working on expanding the trail system in Rexburg, but there are no plans to put more trails in the nature park. Eagle Park (4^th North, Eagle Park drive. Go north on 5^th West until you are circling the rodeo grounds. Take the left after the Dog pound) has some dirt bike trails, and the hope is to get Eagle Park connected to the River Parkway trail eventually. We’ve also been working on putting in more disc golf holes at Eagle Park.”

Rendering of future Nature Park playground equipment

Johnson explained that the funding for these projects was not “COVID money.”

“The CARES Act gave our city money to pay our first responders,” she said. “That increased our reserves, and so we felt we could use some of the reserve money to purchase the playground equipment. We already had some money saved for the equipment, so we added some from the reserve . . . to purchase it.”

Here is a picture of the new equipment coming. It has special needs swings plus regular swings, a zip line, climbing equipment, slides and more.

Children need a place to be noisy and adults need a quiet place to think. The Nature Park has both. I like how quiet nature park is. I would like see a sign that gives the history of the park.