Neighborhood park gets new name, honoring “beacon” of the community

POCATELLO – A park in one of the Gate City’s historical neighborhoods will now be known by a new name as it continues to carry a deep history.

Members of the Pocatello City Council passed a resolution Thursday, proposed by the Bonneville Neighborhood Association, to change the name of Bonneville Community Park. The park will now be known as Purce Park, named after two influential community members, John and Idaho Purce.

“My mother, my father, they’ve always believed in community. They’ve always believed in family. Most of all, they always believed in (community),” said Kim Purce, son of John and Idaho, at the city council meeting.

John and Idaho Purce were one of the city’s most involved and influential married couples throughout the 20th century. Idaho was born in the city in 1926, and John first arrived in the early 1940s as a military police officer.

Kellie Purce-Braseth spoke with EastIdahoNews.com about the impact her mother and father had on the Pocatello community.

Kellie called her mother “instrumental” in establishing The Pocatello Free Clinic, the Bonneville Neighborhood Center and the park named in her and her husband’s honor. John helped to establish Habitat for Humanity in Pocatello, served as a member of the housing authority and was a president of the Pocatello branch of the NAACP.

After John has passed away, Idaho still lives in the Bonneville Neighborhood and will turn 99 this year.

John and Idaho lived in Pocatello in the Historic Triangle Neighborhood, which was Idaho’s most diverse community, made up of Black, Hispanic, Asian, Italian, Greek and French people who moved to the area in search of new opportunities. Its borders were Center Street to the south, South 8th Avenue to the east and the rail yards to the west before its population was uprooted due to city planning practices in the 1950s and 1960s.

RELATED | Pocatello to document the history of the Historic Triangle Neighborhood

The idea to change the name of the park originally started because of good timing and a need to clear up confusion around where the park was located.

“The fact that we have two Bonneville Parks has raised a lot of conflict in events. When we’ve had something happen at the Bonneville Community Park, people have gone to the Bonneville Park up on Bonneville Street,” explained Alfreda Vann, a representative of the Bonneville Neighborhood Association.

“And then with the city’s new logo, they’re redoing Park signs. So it just all came together that this might be the perfect time for a name change of the park,” said Catherine McCarthy, director of community engagement and marketing for NeighborWorks Pocatello, which supports the six core neighborhood associations of Pocatello.

The Bonneville Neighborhood Association approached Anne Butler, director of Parks & Recreation, in order to take the necessary steps to put the proposal forward. The first thing they had to decide was what the new name of the park would be.

“We had been talking about different ideas, and we kicked around a few different ideas,” Butler said. “When they brought the Purse name, that’s the one that really stuck. It made a lot of sense.”

The way that Vann sees it, changing the name of the park helps to bring forward not just John and Idaho, but also a part of Pocatello’s history that was once forgotten.

“It’s a wonderful remembrance of that area. It was the most diverse ethnic neighborhood in the state of Idaho, and that needs to be celebrated,” Vann said. “The history and also the future of the city of Pocatello. It’s really well worth celebrating and acknowledging.”

Before City Councilor Corey Mangum made the motion to approve the name change, Mayor Brian Blad addressed Kim and asked that he “give (the city council’s) love” to his mother.

“I can’t think of a better family to have this honor and be able to have this named after them for the rest of time,” said Mayor Brian Blad. “The Purce family has been an absolutely incredible beacon for our community.”