The Forgotten Treasure In These American Lands | The American Conservative

Farming most colors my memories of the land: Idaho s agriculture industry is the single largest contributor to the state s economy. In 2018, Edible Idaho reported that only 20 percent of all U.S. farmland has soil of the quality comparable to the Treasure Valley. This is, as the American Farmland Trust s Julia Freegood put it, the crème de la crème of agricultural land.

But farms throughout the Treasure Valley are quickly transforming into suburbs these days the broad stretches of green turning to gray, fields morphing into cul-de-sacs and strip malls. My drives from the Boise airport to my family s home in the northwest are increasingly punctuated by the loss of earth to asphalt. 

This explosion of growth is much larger than Boise: it is part of a centuries-long transformation of farm towns and cities in the West. The boom originated in California in the last century, and these days it is transforming cities like Boise, Spokane, and Reno places where developers reportedly can t build homes and apartments fast enough. In 2017, an exurb of Boise called Meridian was the fifth-fastest-growing city in the United States, according to the Census Bureau. And among the top 10 states that grew from 2017 to 2018, the Census found that the top four are Western, arid states: Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Arizona. 

One report warns that by the year 2100, Idaho s Treasure Valley could be completely unrecognizable to the people who live there today.  

via www.theamericanconservative.com

I remember Boise in the 1970’s. A town stagnating under an ill-planned urban renewal scheme and all the smart kids eager to get away. Now it’s growing fast. But that’s a bad thing I guess. Of course it’s becoming something unrecognizable. That’s what places do. We’ll be dead so what are you worried about?