Guest blogger, Joseph Gonzalez, wrote this feature post about Dalton Smith, Pease Park Conservancy’s Park Operations Coordinator. Joseph is a fourth-year journalism student at the University of Texas at Austin and loves writing about music and nature, along with the occasional poem. His work has appeared in Drift Magazine, Afterglow, and the Daily Texan.

Dalton is weighing the litter collected on the “Litter Pick-Up Monday” volunteer event in the park.

Volunteers keep Pease Park flourishing with help from beloved conservancy worker

by Joseph Gonzalez

June 6, 2025

Rain clouds linger on a Wednesday morning as Dalton Smith gathers weeding equipment from a shed. For Smith, it’s another day working to maintain Pease Park, the oldest public park in Austin.

Buckets of gloves, pitch forks and wheelbarrows are put to the side as a handful of volunteers gather. Smith lets them know they will be weeding invasive species from the flower beds and mulching an area by the basketball court.

He is the Park Operations Coordinator for Pease Park Conservancy. As part of his role, he leads volunteer events three times a week to help maintain various areas of the park.

Smith is nearing four years of working for Pease Park Conservancy, which was established in 2013 to “restore, enhance and maintain (the) 84-acre public green space for the sustainable use and enjoyment of all,” according to its mission statement.

His history with the park though starts well before he started his job.

“Growing up, I lived in Liberty Hill, but whenever we would visit Austin, whether it was to visit other family, or even go see a movie, we would always stop in Pease Park,” Smith said. “It was kind of tucked away, a nice little kind of safe haven where I could go onto the playground, hang out, as well as my family could still walk around the trails.”

Now, Smith is able to help a diverse orientation of fellow park-goers foster their love for their park through volunteering.

“The work volunteers do has a tangible impact on the park,” says Smith. As a result of the rainfall from recent storms, invasive species like Bermuda grass have grown rapidly within certain plant beds in the park. The work to remove these invasive species is primarily done by volunteers and Smith, who works beside them.

Aldo Ruiz was one of the volunteers who helped weed. The Conservancy recently hired him as an intern. Volunteering makes him feel a deeper connection with the park.

“You actually get involved and get to know the park in other ways,” Ruiz said.

Many volunteers have echoed this sentiment to Smith.

“A lot of them say, ‘I didn't even know this side of the park was open past the tree line,’ and now I see them come, like, once a week for some of them, whether it's running, doing their picnics, throwing a birthday party,” Smith said.

Volunteers recognize the work they did when they come back to the park.

“(They) come up and talk to me afterwards and stuff like that … going like, ‘oh, remember that project we did?’ And I get to show them, ‘oh yeah we just cleared all of this space out, we did all these plantings, and we have a bunch of wildflowers growing over there,’” Smith said. “It really gets you grounded and makes you feel very progressive about a big community space that has a lot of historical value.”

After nearly two hours of weeding and mulching, volunteers carry wheelbarrows full of weeds back to the shed where they first met. Smith genuinely thanks the volunteers for their hard work and tells them their work is done. They thank Smith and say goodbye as they walk the opposite way down a trail. He goes back in the shed to start his next project. Smith hopes to see them again at a future volunteer event.

“Dalton has become a real leader for us in the park. I don't know what we would do without him,” said Allison Johnson, Director of Community Engagement for Pease Park Conservancy. “People who go to the park are so familiar with him now. He's our friendly face in the park.”