“Seems like everything is moving to Boise or Twin Falls,” said Janice Jacobson, 56, the manager of
the King’s discount store in Gooding, a town of about 3,500 people 45 minutes from Twin Falls.
Rows of closed downtown stores in nearby places like Buhl stand in sharp contrast to Main Avenue in
Twin Falls, where businesses like the Twin Falls Sandwich Company are packed with hungry customers.
In such a brutal calculus, economists and local politicians said, little things add up fast: like being close enough to a big city,
but not so close as to be crushed by the competition; having good access by air and highway for passengers and freight; and then having enough trained workers if and when new companies knock on the door.
Twin Falls, population 47,000, is a place where rows of hay and feed corn brush right up against the edge of town,
but it’s also the biggest community for a hundred miles in any direction, which makes it a shopping hub.
An Idaho Town Bucks the Perception of Rural Struggle -
By KIRK JOHNSONAPRIL 3, 2017
TWIN FALLS, Idaho — Lost jobs, empty storefronts and shrinking populations.
In the nine-county south-central region of Idaho anchored by Twin Falls, unemployment
is 3.2 percent — lower than booming Seattle or Idaho’s biggest city, Boise.
From 2000 to 2015, Twin Falls County’s population increased by almost 25 percent — twice as fast as the nation’s.
Shawn Barigar, the mayor of Twin Falls, said his community could not afford to lose any workers.