By Mike Weland
Since 2020, one of the fastest growing states in the U.S. has been Idaho, increasing by 6.2 percent between 2020 and 2023, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. This represents a rise from 1,849,339 in July 2020 to 1,964,726 in July 2023. However, this growth has not been even across the state.
And among the fastest growing counties in Idaho is Boundary County, which grew in population by 12-percent between 2020 and 2023, going from 12,139 in 20 to an estimated 13,557 people.
The only county that grew faster was Camas County at 14-percent.
According to the article, a lot of Idahoans are also moving out of state as well, but for every Idahoan leaving, three people are moving in, most of them from California. And the majortiy have something in common.
Few people come to Boundary County for job opportunities, to get rich or for the amazing social life, but Boundary County has long had periodic influxes of people drawn here in search of something specific, often attracted by articles in various magazines written to a specific audience by lifestyle writers not from here who fit
In the 70s, it was people wanting to get back to the land, be self-sufficient, to live off the grid, raise their own crops, spin their own clothes. A few found their idea of heaven but for most the luster wore off quickly.
There were also quite a few who came here to disappear, many of them Vietnam veterans, who sought to slip as far away from civilization as they could get. Then came the Redoubt, a well-stocked group looking for defensible space in which to prepare for the end times.
First proposed in 2011 by survivalist novelist and blogger James Wesley Rawles, the Great American Redoubt Movement designates Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming along with eastern parts of Oregon and Washington, as a safe haven for conservative Christians.
These days if you ask what brought a new neighbor to Boundary County, chances are good you’ll hear a new refrain — “I came here to be among like-minded people.”
Based on recent voter registration data, about 65-percent of eligible voters moving into Idaho register as Reublicans, about 12-percent as Democrats.
And of the new Republicans, most of whom came to escape the “woke liberal left that’s destroying our country,” most consider themselves “staunchly conservative,” by the definition of the day, meaning they tend to the far right end of the political spectrum and have zero interest in fitting in.
Instead, their stated goal is political takeover to “Make America Great Again” as espoused by the moralistic Heritage Foundation in their
“Project 2025” 900-plus page plan to reform the United States into a homogenous and authoritarian white Christian nation.
And so far, they seem to be doing fairly well.