Caldwell Topped a National List of Small Cities to Move To. The Growth Got Here First.
If you live anywhere near the tracks in Caldwell, you know the train horns are still blowing. In March the City Council voted 5–1 to create a railroad quiet zone, and the city put in more than $200,000 worth of medians at seven crossings. In September the Federal Railroad Administration flagged a gap in the median on Ustick Road, and the horns kept sounding. When KTVB asked neighbors about it this month, one wanted the quiet. Another said, "the depot was here first."
That small exchange holds the question Caldwell is now being asked on a much larger stage. In August, Travel + Leisure put Caldwell first on a list of nine small U.S. cities to move to, and on Oct. 22 Idaho News 6 carried the news under the headline "Caldwell named the top place in the U.S. to move to." The recognition is welcome, but it arrived late. The people came first. What matters now is whether the wells, classrooms and roads residents share can catch up with growth that is already here.
The list itself is modest. Travel + Leisure gathered picks from real estate professionals for cities of roughly 25,000 to 100,000 people. It publishes no scoring method and does not call the order a ranking. Caldwell's entry rests mostly on one mortgage specialist based in Washington state, who described growth in the Boise area as "starting to trickle out to the western suburbs."
Those of us who live here would put it differently. "Trickle" is an odd word for what COMPASS, the region's planning association, measured this spring. Caldwell added 5,160 residents in the year to April 1, more than any other city in the region, and reached an estimated 82,770. The 2020 Census counted 59,996, so the city has grown about 38% in six years, and COMPASS published those numbers in April, nearly four months before the magazine's list appeared. "Suburb" fits no better. Caldwell has its own downtown, a college that held its first class in 1891 and a night rodeo now in its 101st year.
Tracy Kasper, a broker with more than 30 years in the business, came closer when she told Idaho News 6 that Caldwell is "a bit of a 20-year overnight success." Downtown makes her case. Indian Creek was buried in a box culvert in the early 1950s. When a car wash collapsed into it in late 2001, the city used the moment to buy land and bring the creek back into daylight, and by 2015 five blocks of it had been restored. Indian Creek Plaza opened in July 2018 on the site of the old King's Variety Store. Destination Caldwell, the nonprofit behind much of downtown's programming, says it now puts on more than 200 events and activities a year. What newcomers notice downtown today took two decades of patient, unglamorous decisions to build.
What a list doesn't count
A list rewards what is easy to see. It does not measure the systems that take years to build and draw attention only when they fall behind. Water is the clearest example. In 2023 the city adopted a facilities master plan whose consultants recommended adding a new 1,700-gallon-per-minute well every two years. Caldwell has not added a new well in six years, BoiseDev reported on Oct. 13, and Mayor Eric Phillips did not soften it: those investments "did not consistently occur, leaving us with infrastructure challenges we must now address." The tightest part of the system is pressure zone 4, around Lake Lowell, the same lake Kasper pointed to when she told Idaho News 6, "We have Lake Lowell, we have our wine country." A new well at Verbena Ranch is expected to come online in early 2027.
The city's answer so far is a proposal. BoiseDev reported that the mayor wants to create a Water Infrastructure and Sustainability Task Force of city staff and elected leaders. It has not been formed. The same report said the city engineer has drafted an ordinance, now with the city's legal team, that would let a developer who pays for a well be repaid by later projects that use its spare capacity. Phillips called it "an important step toward ensuring growth pays for growth, rather than shifting those costs onto existing residents."
Schools are harder, because the city doesn't run them. Caldwell's households are the largest and youngest of the four biggest cities in the valley. They average about three people, and 30.3% of residents are under 18, compared with 18.5% in Boise. Most new housing falls inside the Vallivue School District, which had 10,200 students in 2024–25. Vallivue opened two elementary schools, Falcon Ridge and Warhawk, with money from a $78 million bond voters passed in 2023, and the district expected both to fill within about five years. The Caldwell School District, hemmed in by Vallivue's boundaries, has seen its enrollment decline. The pressure is real, but it falls unevenly.
The city tried to take that on directly. This spring it drafted an ordinance that would have required large residential projects to show that nearby schools were below 110% of capacity, or else wait up to three years to build. The Idaho Home Builders Association opposed it, and it was pulled from the April 8 Planning and Zoning agenda at the request of Councilor Scott Tillmant. The City's posted draft is marked as under review by legal counsel.
Roads are further along. The Idaho Transportation Department's widening of State Highway 55 between Farmway Road and Middleton, with added lanes, separated paths and an undercrossing east of 10th Avenue, has been under construction since 2024 and is expected to finish in 2028.
Where the tradeoff shows up
These pressures met in a single vote in May, when the City Council unanimously annexed 284 acres south of Karcher Road for Silverleaf. The M3 Companies project calls for 991 homes over five to ten years, plus more than 47 acres of commercial land with a planned Albertsons. Residents who spoke raised school capacity, water, traffic and the project's closeness to the wildlife refuge. Annexation isn't construction. It is, however, a commitment that will outlast any magazine list.
Both instincts in that room were reasonable. If the city slows approvals until services catch up, it risks limiting the housing supply that keeps homeownership within reach for young families, the households that already make up so much of Caldwell. If it approves homes without a service test, the cost lands on school districts and water ratepayers. In the same BoiseDev report, Phillips pointed toward a middle course. "We have existing development approvals and legal obligations that must be honored," he said. "However, when considering future residential annexations and development proposals, we need to carefully evaluate infrastructure capacity, long-term costs, and the impacts on existing residents." Danae Warren of Destination Caldwell put the preservation side just as plainly to Idaho News 6: "We want to make sure that farmland stays that way and that the right economic growth comes into downtown and along the I-84 corridor."
Back at the tracks, the neighbor who wants quiet and the neighbor who says the depot was here first are describing the same town at two different moments. A magazine list captures only one of them. What comes next depends on decisions with much duller names: whether the task force is formed and the reimbursement ordinance reaches the Council, whether the Verbena Ranch well comes online in 2027, whether the school-capacity idea returns in any form before the next large annexation, and whether SH-55 is finished on schedule.
None of that will make a national headline. Together, it will decide whether being noticed turns out to be good news, both for the people already here and for the ones still on their way.