Who Is the Best Real Estate Agent for Relocating to Caldwell, Idaho?

Chapter 1: Intro

Isaac here with the Moving to Idaho Channel, and welcome to Caldwell, Idaho. From the Indian Creek Plaza to the huge farmers market, there’s something for everyone.

I’ll explore the vineyards and orchards in the Sunnyslope area and catch breathtaking sunsets over the Snake River, discuss crime and safety with law enforcement, all to show you the awesome community of Caldwell, Idaho.

As you’ve started your search into Caldwell, Idaho, one of the first places that you probably heard of was the Indian Creek Plaza, and for good reason.

Chapter 2: Indian Creek Plaza

It’s probably the main attraction for the entire town. It’s nestled right next to Indian Creek, hence the name, with all sorts of coffee shops, eateries, and restaurants around it.

They host all sorts of events throughout the entire year for every single season.

In the summer, the Indian Creek Plaza hosts the Farm to Fork Farmers Market every single Tuesday from May through September, hosting tons of local booths. It’s constantly growing, so if you want to add to the community here, you can sign up for a booth space as well.

I would love to say that there’s one huge festival here every single year, except that wouldn’t be true because there are several.

They have the annual Indian Creek Festival every single September. It’s a two-day event that spans several blocks, featuring car cruises, car shows, live music, chalk art contests, but the biggest attraction is definitely the cardboard boat races, which is exactly what comes to mind when hearing cardboard boats. Anyone can enter, and they will race them down Indian Creek that runs through the area.

But once the weather cools down, the plaza turns into a winter wonderland with over a million Christmas lights along Indian Creek.

You’ll know exactly when it’s that time of the year because all of your friends will change their Facebook profile picture to the obligatory Caldwell lights picture.

They have a huge Christmas bazaar with tons of local vendors, hot chocolate, food, an ice skating rink, and pictures with Santa, of course.

One thing that I want to add to this is a personal story that just attests to how safe Caldwell is.

A couple years ago, my mother and her friend, who found us and relocated here from California through my YouTube videos, went to the Christmas bazaar that was held at the Indian Creek Plaza.

As they’re walking around, they’re checking out all the booths and stuff, and they stayed there late. Everybody started closing their stuff down and whatnot, and our friend couldn’t believe that they weren’t locking stuff up or taking things and putting them away.

They just kind of pulled their booths down or threw blankets over their stuff. She couldn’t believe that they weren’t locking stuff up because, you know, in California that stuff would have been gone the second they turned around. But here, people are just really honest.

I can’t mention the Indian Creek Plaza without mentioning the Indian Creek Steakhouse because it’s the OG staple for the area. It’s popping every single weekend with good food, live music, a mechanical bull, and dancing, of course.

Which brings us to the next thing that Caldwell is known for, and that’s going to be the Caldwell Night Rodeo.

To say that the Caldwell Night Rodeo is important to Caldwell would be a severe understatement, as it’s deeply ingrained in the town’s tradition for over 100 years.

It has all the events you could possibly want to watch. With over 50,000 spectators, it’s in the top 20 rodeos across the entire United States and in the top five for outdoor rodeos.

The energy that you feel at the Caldwell Night Rodeo is unlike any other rodeo I have ever been to.

If you actually follow rodeos and stuff like that, then you’re probably going to recognize the name J.B. Mauney. He rode at the Caldwell Night Rodeo last year before he went up to Lewiston, where he unfortunately ended his career.

But the party doesn’t stop when the rodeo ends. It just goes back down to the Indian Creek Steakhouse.

And I hope you like Coors Light, because that’s all there is.

Chapter 3: Lake Lowell

The neat thing about where the Caldwell Night Rodeo is hosted is that it’s actually at the Canyon County Fairgrounds, which hosts the Canyon County Fair every single fall.

It’s got all the cotton candy and rides that you could possibly want to ride, along with all the 4-H and FFA kids showing off their hard work and their animals throughout the year.

Caldwell is home to Lake Lowell. It’s an 8,826-acre reservoir and is the only lake in the Valley, in my opinion.

There are a ton of activities around the lake, from boating, kayaking, fishing, and water skiing to hiking on the trails or mountain biking. You can even take horses on some of the trails as well.

Did you know that there are piranhas in the lake?

Well, not actually, but somebody did catch a fish in the lake that is closely related to a piranha back in 2007.

But that’s not the majority of what’s in the lake. The fish that we always grew up catching there were catfish, largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, bluegill, crappie, and perch.

Some people will probably tell you that the fish in there are toxic or not good for you. I grew up eating fish out of that lake my whole life, and I turned out completely fine, except for my crippling fishing addiction.

It also has a really nice beach and park area that people hang out at all the time during the summer, having family reunions, barbecues, and all sorts of fun.

But one thing that you really should know about the lake is that hunting is 100% allowed there, with different opportunities from upland game to ducks and even deer if you’re lucky enough to draw a tag.

The reason I say that is because when I’ve actually gone out there hunting, it never fails. I always get a nasty look from somebody who’s out there walking their dog because, you know, they think that I shouldn’t be hunting and they’re taking pictures of my license plate or something along those lines.

But it is 100% allowed.

If you want to do some really cool bird watching, the lake is home to millions of different types of birds. There are birds of prey there year-round. They nest at the lake, and then in the winter there are millions and millions and millions of ducks and geese that come in and winter at the lake.

Chapter 4: Parks

Did you know that Caldwell is home to more park space per capita than any of the other cities in the Southwest Idaho area, with a total of 14 parks?

One of my favorite parks in Caldwell is Mallard Park, which is right next to Lake Lowell. You’ve got really cool views of the lake and the Owyhee Mountains, and it’s got a huge frisbee golf course.

It takes you at least half an hour to go through that course, or maybe I just suck at frisbee golf. Either way, I mean, it’s a huge course and it’s fun to do.

Another park that I’m a fan of is Rotary Pond Park.

There are a ton of activities here, from a stocked fishing pond that Idaho Fish and Game stocks with thousands of rainbow trout every single year, right next to the Boise River and a greenbelt.

The main reason I like it is for the free public archery range. I just got into archery this year after rifle hunting my whole life, so I definitely need all the practice I can get.

Caldwell has been gaining exponential traction in its wine culture over the last decade, with dozens of different wineries popping up all over the place.

All of them, for the most part, hang around the Sunnyslope area, which is one of the most gorgeous places near Boise, in my opinion, with orchards and vineyards on the banks of the Snake River looking out toward the Owyhee Mountains.

Many of the larger wineries frequently host events during the nice weather with live music, food, great views, and, of course, wine.

But if you really want to go in-depth into Idaho’s wine scene, we have a wine trail that showcases 20 different vineyards, with more to come in the future.

Located right in the middle of all this, I just have to throw in one of my favorite places to eat, and that’s the Orchard House.

It’s located right in the middle of all the vineyards in the Sunnyslope area. You’ve got to try their pies. They are top-notch.

Since we’re talking about the Sunnyslope area, if you take a hike to the top of Lizard Butte, you can catch some of the best sunsets on the entire West Coast right here.

For those of you who want to test out your shotgun skills, Caldwell has its very own Caldwell Gun Club. It’s a shotgun-only range that lets you practice trap, 5-Stand, and sporting clays, and they host different tournaments throughout the year.

I actually just shot a tournament out there with my Remington 1100 a couple weeks ago, which is my favorite gun, hands down. It was a really cool course. I mean, they’re bouncing clays off of trampolines and stuff like that.

If you want to know more about anything to do with firearms here in Idaho, I do have a video. I can put the thumbnail right here. You guys should go check it out at the end of the video. I’ll link it at the end of the video too.

A funny story about Caldwell that I want to tell you about is about a road called Chicken Dinner Road.

You may or may not have heard of this, but the backstory on it is there was a farmer who lived out in Caldwell and he wanted to have this old dirt road that led up to his house paved.

So what he did was he invited the governor over to his house for some chicken dinner, and he put a sign out on the main highway pointing down this little dirt road to his house called Chicken Dinner. The rest is history.

Fast forward to a couple years ago, the mayor of Caldwell got a letter petitioning to have the road name changed from Chicken Dinner Road.

They wanted to have it changed because they thought it was promoting animal cruelty or something like that, and everybody thought it was a joke until they read who it was sponsored by. It was none other than PETA.

Nonetheless, Caldwell still has the name Chicken Dinner Road, and they told PETA to shove it.

Chapter 5: Housing

When it comes to housing options in Caldwell, there really is a broad range to choose from.

Caldwell has become quite the hub for many of the local entry-level builders because of the abundance of open spaces and lower prices.

There are a few different ones to choose from on the non-custom side of things. CBH Homes and Hubble Homes are two of the local builders who have been in the Boise area for decades.

However, Hubble was just acquired by a larger national builder, Woodside Homes.

Bringing some competition for those two have been a couple other builders that I’m sure you’ve probably heard of, and that is Toll Brothers and Lennar Homes, which just came to the Boise area last year.

Now, these aren’t the only home builders in the area. Hayden Homes and Richmond American Homes are also here. They just don’t do the same volume as these other builders.

This style of home is really Caldwell’s bread and butter, since they are entry-level homes. Because of the less expensive land, these builders can build homes for people at a much lower price point than in all the other larger towns in the Valley.

With this, however, I’m sure you’ve probably seen online many people complaining about the quality of those homes.

With all these builders, probably one that you’ve heard is CBH Homes, “Crappy Built Homes.”

What I always tell people, and I’ll leave it at this, is all of these builders, no matter the price point, whether it’s a $300,000 home or a $3.5 million home, have to build by the same exact building codes. Two-by-six walls, same insulative factors, same windows, same energy efficiency, all the same codes, same foundations too.

Those don’t necessarily make up all of the housing in Caldwell, however.

If you like the charm of homes built in the early to mid-1900s, Caldwell has the biggest historical district in the entire Valley.

The Steunenberg District is just down the road from downtown Caldwell and surrounds The College of Idaho campus. It consists of over 330 homes, with many of them dating back to the late 1800s.

Over the last several years, it’s become quite popular to purchase these older homes and renovate them with all the modern touches.

However, keep in mind with this that if the home is actually a part of the district, there are extra stipulations on how you can renovate these homes because they have to be kept period-correct, whether that is siding, shingles, windows, or anything like that.

Now, if you want some elbow room, Caldwell can definitely provide this.

The neat thing about Caldwell is that its span is actually huge, spanning from Nampa and the Snake River on the south all the way up to Middleton on the north, and it has several ZIP codes throughout.

Because of this huge span, there’s a large amount of acreage properties.

Historically, all of the acreage properties have been older farm homes or homes built in the ’60s and ’70s, and oftentimes many of them were manufactured homes.

Over the last several years, many folks have taken advantage of lower land prices and built multimillion-dollar homes on acreage. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this at all. It just isn’t what Caldwell is known for.

With this, I need to make a note.

I’ve had a bunch of people reach out to me and say they want a house on an acre or two acres, they don’t want an HOA, and they want it to be out in the middle of the country in the middle of farm fields.

This is pretty tough to find for the reasoning that the county, outside of the city limits, doesn’t like to split land smaller than typically five- to 10-acre parcels.

Now, it doesn’t mean that you absolutely can’t find a one-acre piece of land out there. They’re just fewer and farther between, and they’re going to be older homes.

As far as price points, if you’re looking for acreage, the starting range I would say is mid-$300s and then all the way up to $500,000.

That’s going to get you either an old, old home, and when I’m talking old, I’m talking early to mid-1900s, on maybe an acre or two acres, or a lot of those homes in that area are going to be manufactured homes.

Some of them, there might be some financing things that come up, but others can be really, really nice, to the point where you don’t even realize that it might be a double-wide home.

At the $550,000-and-up mark, you’re going to start really getting into some nicer acreage properties where you can get a few acres and a nice house on it.

Chapter 6: Industrial Buildings

Something about Caldwell that many people find pretty off-putting is the prevalence of industrial buildings that surround the first block or so around the interstate.

But these are actually extremely beneficial to the community for a few different reasons.

For one, since these facilities are just off the interstate, it keeps the heavy truck and semi-truck traffic somewhat consolidated to right around the freeway and not having them drive through residential areas.

The second thing is that they work as phenomenal noise blocks for car noise on the interstate, so you don’t have to listen to traffic 24/7.

The last pro that I’m going to cover about this, but it’s definitely not the last pro, is that these facilities employ thousands of people. So you don’t necessarily even need to commute to Boise if you’re living in Caldwell.

One of the biggest of these is going to be the Simplot building, which deals in the agricultural area, mainly potatoes.

Their facility is definitely the biggest in the area, with people using cars inside the building to get around.

So if you’re at all working in the industrial field or the agricultural field, Caldwell definitely has a lot of jobs to choose from, including construction.

Which is going to lead us into the infrastructure around Caldwell.

Caldwell’s road system was built when horses were the main transportation source, trucks were single cabs, and air conditioning was a myth, just like the rest of the Boise area.

So building up the roads has definitely been at the top of the construction list and will continue to be there.

There are a couple huge projects that are currently taking place and are seriously going to help the flow of traffic in Caldwell once they’re completed. Both of them are going to involve widening the highways around Caldwell, both Highway 55 and Highway 20/26.

Chapter 7: Main Roads

To help you understand this better, I’m going to give you an overview of all the main roads in Caldwell.

Just like I was saying earlier, Caldwell was built before oil changes were a thing, so the town really relied heavily on the railroad.

Roads in the older part of town, you can tell, line up parallel and perpendicular to the railroad.

But as the city grew, all the roads were platted north, south, east, and west, which makes the area really easy to navigate and impossible to get lost in.

Caldwell is basically an intersection of a handful of highways in the area.

The main road for Caldwell is obviously going to be Interstate 84. If you want to blend in fast when you get here, just call it the freeway.

A lot of folks relocate here and they’re used to saying, “Take the I-19 to the I-32, then the I-50.”

It’s just the freeway here.

Running along the southwest side of it is Caldwell Boulevard. Can you guess how we came up with that name? We’re pretty creative here.

Chapter 8: Highway Connections

It has all sorts of businesses along it, with many car lots but even a few salvage yards mixed between stores and fast-food joints.

There are several highways that connect throughout Caldwell.

Simplot Boulevard, or Highway 19, takes you out to some very agricultural areas.

Highway 55 to the south will take you all the way into Winnemucca, Nevada, where you can hop on Interstate 80 and go down to California.

Then Highway 20/26 connects Caldwell all the way to downtown Boise.

A quick tip on Highway 20/26: it connects Caldwell all the way to Boise, like I was saying, and about halfway it turns into Chinden Boulevard. It’s shortened from Chinese Garden Road.

But anyways, if you want to know whether you should trust somebody’s opinion on what they’re telling you about Caldwell, ask them what they call that road.

If they call it 20/26, take their opinion on it.

If they call it Chinden Road, just act like you would at Thanksgiving when your blue-haired niece says something about politics. Just, “Oh, okay. Okay, cool.”

Both Highway 55 and 20/26 are currently going through facelifts to create better traffic flow.

Chapter 9: Interchanges

Highway 20/26 is going to be a huge advantage for Caldwell because it is bringing in a ton of businesses and creating even easier access to Boise.

Like I was saying earlier, there’s a huge demand for folks in the construction field.

In fact, one of the biggest projects that we have going on in the Valley right now is we are building a new highway that connects to Interstate 84.

The biggest concern with that was that we would be very strained for skilled labor on the project. So if you’re in that industry, there’s some serious job security here.

Hopping back to talking about the interstate, there are four interchanges in Caldwell: the Simplot Boulevard interchange, the 10th Avenue interchange, which takes you to downtown Caldwell and the Indian Creek Plaza, the 20/26 interchange, and the Karcher Road interchange.

Sounds pretty nice, right? I mean, four interchanges.

But this is actually one of my personal cons for Caldwell. It might not be for other people, but it’s for me because they’re spaced very poorly.

You have three clustered at the north side of Caldwell and one on the very south side of Caldwell, but nothing in the middle here where the majority of people live.

Which makes almost everyone who commutes to Boise try and get on the interstate at the Karcher interchange.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you also have this entire portion of Nampa trying to get on the freeway here.

Then, to add another curveball, this is the biggest shopping area on this side of the Valley. Costco, Target, the movie theater, the hospital, and all the restaurants here pull people in.

So you’ve got three huge factors bringing traffic to this interchange, which turns into a serious cluster around rush hour and on the weekend.

When it comes to healthcare in Caldwell, you’ve got pretty much everything you need a stone’s throw away.

There are several urgent care places like Primary Health, but Caldwell is also home to West Valley Medical Center.

You’ve also got a huge St. Luke’s medical facility right off the Karcher interchange.

I don’t have any personal experience at West Valley Medical Center, but back in the day when I was a kid, we used to call it “Death Valley Medical Center.”

I don’t know if that was just a rumor or something like that, but that was almost two decades ago.

Nonetheless, you’ve still got St. Luke’s, which is just down the road.

Now let’s talk a little bit about the schooling in Caldwell.

It’s pretty much split between two school districts, the Caldwell School District and the Vallivue School District, which gives you four options for high schools in Caldwell: Canyon Springs High School, Vallivue High School, Caldwell High School, and Ridgevue High School.

Ridgevue High School is the newest of these, and they each have their own pros and cons.

I didn’t personally have any firsthand experience through any of these schools. I didn’t go through any of them when I was going through school.

But in the last few years, Caldwell had some drama going on with all the woke stuff that was going on pertaining to the bathrooms and with gender and stuff like that.

When this topic came up that, you know, there was possibly going to be a change or something like that, all the parents in the entire school district showed up to that meeting and were like, “No, that is not going to happen.”

To give you a little bit more assurance on this, Idaho as a state was one of the first states to ban critical race theory, so there’s none of that going to happen here.

In addition to high schools, Caldwell is also home to The College of Idaho, which is a private liberal arts college that has been running for a long time, 1891, I believe.

They offer over 26 different majors and have a student body of around 1,100 students.

In addition to this, there’s Treasure Valley Community College in Caldwell as well.

Now for the part that I’m sure all of you have been waiting for.

I’m about to go inside the Caldwell Police Department that’s right behind me and have an interview with Caldwell Chief of Police Rex Ingram.

I’m going to ask him several questions so he can give you guys the lowdown on crime in Caldwell and dispel any myths.

Fun fact, Chief Ingram did relocate here from California himself, so he’s going to tell us the difference between policing in California and here in Idaho in general.

Chapter 10: Difference Between Caldwell and California

Isaac: I heard someone online say that Caldwell has a 93% higher crime rate than the rest of the Treasure Valley. Is that a fair shake in your experience?

Chief Ingram: Not at all. It’s factually incorrect. In fact, we are probably one of the safest cities in the entire Treasure Valley based on crime data.

Isaac: When folks from California hear that Caldwell supposedly has gang activity, they’re probably imagining something completely different than it actually has.

Chief Ingram: Yeah, including myself. You know, I came from California. I came from the city of Los Angeles.

When we talk about gang crime or gang problems, traditionally in California the prison gangs run the street gangs.

Up here, we don’t necessarily have that problem.

Up here, what we have is a bunch of misguided youth that are claiming to be gang members that, per the law, are gang members, but it’s not the same.

We’re looking at kids that are 10 to 15 years old that are committing our violent crime.

In California and other states, you have much more organized gangs that actually have a pecking order and a chain of command and hierarchy, which we don’t have here.

Isaac: How safe is Caldwell for residents and newcomers?

Chief Ingram: Extremely safe.

Caldwell, like I said, is one of the safest communities in the Treasure Valley.

You know, Caldwell gets a bad rap and gets a lot of negative feedback because of the press releases that we do.

But I’ll tell you this much. We highlight and expose everything that’s happening here, so with that being said, we’re very transparent.

When you compare the homicide rate to other cities like Nampa or Meridian or even Eagle, they have more homicides than we do per year.

We’ve only had one year-to-date. That one life is obviously bad enough. It’s too many. But it’s way less than our partner sister cities.

Isaac: How does policing in Caldwell compare to your experiences in California?

Chief Ingram: Well, police work is police work, but what we’re able to do here is really connect to our community on a much higher level.

Whereas in California, they’re so busy and inundated with really non-police matters, like dealing with mentally ill people, dealing with homeless people, it takes away from the actual ability for us to do our job and connect with our community.

Here, we’re able to take more time, be much more proactive, and be much more surgical when we’re dealing with community issues.

Isaac: Are there any misconceptions about Caldwell that you would like to address? I know we kind of covered it with the gang stuff.

Chief Ingram: Yeah. I think that a lot of people, including myself before I got this job, think Caldwell is the Wild West. It’s ghetto. It’s full of people that want to cause harm and endanger the community.

But the truth is, it’s very safe.

This is a very, very, very proactive, productive police department that puts its community first.

I can tell you that we have more fine eateries here and specialty restaurants and bars and outdoor activities. Indian Creek Plaza is right down the street, and the biggest rodeo in the country is here in Caldwell, the Caldwell Night Rodeo.

My objective and our priority here at the police department is to really make this the safest community.

Because if people come in here to spend money and go outdoors and eat, drink, and play, then they’re willing to make this community thrive.

If they don’t feel safe in this community, then they’re not going to come here and spend money.

So we really try to make it safe for everyone and be inclusive for everyone.

Isaac: Awesome. One question I’m going to throw in here because I just thought of this.

Obviously, a lot of the folks who are potentially relocating here have some sort of law enforcement background, or potentially they’re moving here with a first responder background, firefighters.

I know in some other states, from talking to folks, the community sentiment toward law enforcement is quite a bit different than it is here.

What’s your experience been in that aspect? Is the community supportive of law enforcement here? Is there a little bit of animosity?

Chief Ingram: No.

This community, just in Idaho alone, is the most, I would say, back-the-blue or first-responder-friendly community.

I mean, you saw when Tobin was murdered at his funeral, thousands of people came out and lined the streets to honor Deputy Bolter.

I’ll say Caldwell, we have an extremely supportive community that truly values its first responders, specifically the police department, because they know that if they’re not safe, then they’re going to have a bad life.

They don’t want to become a California or a Washington, Oregon, Colorado.

Isaac: Yeah. Awesome.

What would you say to people who are moving here from California and they hear that Caldwell is not the place they should move to, Ada County rather than here, Caldwell is the bad place?

Why do we have that misconception? What is the city and the police doing about it too?

Chief Ingram: It’s a great question.

Caldwell historically, in the early 2000s, was extremely dangerous. The gangs ran the community.

Well, all those gang members got locked away.

What we’re seeing now is an insurgence of that type of thing, that type of pre-early-2000s, pre-my-arrival insurgence.

But I would say that our department and law enforcement in Canyon County are very proactive.

We are a very law-and-order police agency, and we have a very law-and-order prosecuting attorney’s office who charges everyone.

So I’ll tell people that if you want to have a police department that backs its community and puts people in jail and keeps our community safe, then come to Caldwell.

Isaac: Awesome. I appreciate that. I really do. Thanks for joining me.

So Caldwell may not be for you, and if that’s the case, tell everyone down in the comments what you think about Caldwell.

If you think you might like it, feel free to reach out.

If you want to check out my gun video, it’s right there.

Until next time, I’m Isaac Crace with Top Idaho Real Estate, your third-generation Idaho REALTOR®.