Local Boy Scout to help beautify city

Driving into Pocatello, visitors might be seeing some new trees lining the Alameda hillside.

That’s because one local Boy Scout is working with the city and Valley Pride to help beautify the community he and many of southeast Idahoans call home.

At 14-years old and with 55 merit badges under his belt, Highland High School freshman Geoffrey Dye is already working on obtaining his Eagle Scout rank by planting 50 trees along the entrance into Pocatello to help beautify the city.

“It’s really fun to think that 20 to 30 years from now, I will be driving down this very road, coming to see my parents, and then looking at all of these trees while saying, ‘I did that,'” Dye said. “We took out the dead thorn trees and dug them out. We watched this whole hill being made so it’s kind of fun to be a part of this second project.”

But Dye couldn’t have done this without the help from Valley Pride, which is a group of community volunteers whose main mission is to make Pocatello a beautiful place to show off.

They have been working on the Alameda hillside for the past few years, and working with Dye, they were able to obtain a $10,000 grant to help fund the project.

The group’s president, Shelley Goings, said this was a great vision that happened to come together with the right people on board.

“It just fell together,” Goings said. “There was a Boy Scout looking to do an Eagle Scout project and the city was crazy wonderful in also helping us out this week.”

Dye said there were a total of six different types of trees that were planted this weekend, including box elders and pear trees.

Goings said the next step will be to install an irrigation system to sustain the trees, and soon after that they will find a way to stabilize the hillside.