See how many people your town has welcomed lately, and which Boise-area city just shrank
People and more people. As the Boise area keeps drawing newcomers from afar, developers turn farm after farm into subdivisions, more cars squeeze into traffic, and the West Ada School District keeps building new high schools.
But the growth is not uniform. Some Treasure Valley cities are gaining households and new residential real estate much faster than others.
Consider the latest data.
First, the Census Bureau reported in May that Meridian, Caldwell and Nampa were among the 15 fastest-growing U.S. cities with 50,000 people or more from July 2020 to July 2021.
Now the Idaho Department of Labor reports that Meridian is leaving Nampa, once the state’s second-largest city, in Meridian’s population-growth dust.
“Meridian edged out Nampa as Idaho’s second-largest city in 2014, with the population difference increasing each year,” Idaho Labor said in a news release, citing Census Bureau data.
Meanwhile, Garden City actually lost population from 2020 to 2021, falling from 12,316 people in April 2020 to 12,288 in July 2021, the Census Bureau reported separately. While that loss was slight, Idaho Labor said Garden City was one of just eight Idaho cities to lose population.
Garden City’s population is roughly the same as Boise’s South Cole or Centennial neighborhoods. Its decline may be an anomaly: The city grew 12.2% in the 11 years after April 2010, when it had 10,972 people.
Boise remained Idaho’s most populous city with 237,446 people in 2021. That’s 100,000-plus more people than Meridian’s 125,963. But Boise’s growth rate was just one-fifth that of Meridian: 11.7% over 10 years vs. 58%.
Nampa grew by 28.4% to 106,186 people. Caldwell grew 34.6%, to 63,629. Eagle nearly matched Meridian’s pace with 56.6% growth to 32,100. Kuna outpaced even Meridian with 65.8% growth, adding 10,592 residents.
Take a look at these two charts Idaho Labor put out. The first ranks the state’s 15 largest cities by 2021 population, with comparisons to 10 and 20 years earlier:
Meridian welcomed a whopping 46,240 people in the latest decade. That’s four Garden Cities. Boise took on 24,811 more people, Nampa 23,470 and Caldwell 16,358.
The second chart shows Idaho cities’ growth rates from July 2020 to July 2021. (It’s a good bet that many Treasure Valley residents don’t even know where Paul and Dover are. OK, we’ll tell you: Paul is north of Burley — surely you know where Burley is? — and Dover is west of Sandpoint on the Pend Oreille River.)
Little towns rack up big growth rates more easily than large cities do, since they require a lot fewer additional people to move up in a ranking like this.
Keep your eyes on Star (population: 12,912) and Middleton (10,169) for the rest of this decade. Assuming climate change doesn’t dry up Idaho’s rivers and send us all fleeing to Western Oregon (look out, Roseburg!), these small but rapidly expanding cities still have plenty of adjacent agricultural land well suited for a farmer’s final crop: houses.
