First, Where Exactly Is Meridian?
If you’re planning to move to Meridian, there are two words you must practice saying: “No, Idaho.” Although this wildly popular suburb of the Gem State has little in common with its Mississippi sister, it hasn’t (yet) been immortalized in country ballads, and its obscurity outside the Mountain West has also made it less of a target for potato jokes than Boise residents. But these are hardly the reasons so many people are moving to Meridian. Cost and convenience seem to be the driving forces behind the mass migration to this jewel of the Treasure Valley, where the housing is cheaper than on the coasts and the mountains and rivers are right outside your door.
Once upon a time, this little-known hamlet was just a sleepy dairy town, but now, Meridian is officially Treasure Valley’s worst-kept secret. The bell has rung, the beans have spilled, and the toothpaste is fully out of the tube — of the roughly 140,000 individuals who now call the city home, nearly half have moved here since 2010, and 20,000 people have relocated to Meridian in the just last four years — that’s like getting 15 new neighbors every day! You might want to get a second barbecue pit to keep up.
This influx of new residents has brought with it new amenities — a burgeoning food scene, bigger community events and even better public spaces, like Discovery Park. But the rapid growth has also driven real estate prices as high as the Boise Mountains — the average home in Meridian now costs close to half a million dollars.
Located in Ada County, Meridian is just 20 minutes from both Nampa and Boise, where you’ll find bigger-city amenities with small-town approachability, like the Boise Art Museum, the Idaho Botanical Garden and, of course, the Idaho State Capitol. Outside the city, you’ll have some of the most exciting natural terrain in the West to explore, from the Sawtooth National Forest to the roiling Snake River, where you can fish, float and kayak to your adventuresome heart’s content.
If you are looking for a suburban boomtown in the Mountain West that brings a family-centric lifestyle to the rugged Idaho frontier, Meridian should be on your list. Learn more about the pros and cons of living in Meridian, Idaho, in our moving guide below, including the weather, the housing market, the schools and our favorite haunts around town.
What People Love About Meridian
Safe, Clean and Family Oriented
As one of Idaho’s most popular suburbs, Meridian was truly built for families. The city bills itself as one of the safest communities in the West, and they have implemented numerous measures to keep it that way, from enhancing the alert system for fire response teams to building a 10-foot-wide bike and pedestrian pathway connecting a popular neighborhood with its elementary school, eliminating the need for costly (and disliked) buses.
Public art installations and community gardens give residents an easy excuse to get outdoors, and places like the Adventure Island Playground at Settlers Park — a universally accessible play space — have made everyone feel welcome in the city’s most popular public spaces. Thanks to Meridian’s investment in green spaces, the city has also been designated as a Tree City of the World, one of just 210 places across the entire globe to achieve the status.
School-age children can attend one of the academies in the well-regarded West Ada School District, where nearly 40,000 students are enrolled. The district offers numerous specialized programs, from those focusing on arts or STEM fields to the popular International Baccalaureate programs.
Those who are ready for higher education have several options close to home, like ISU-Meridian and Boise State University (go Broncos!), and other schools like the University of Idaho and the University of Oregon are driving distance from the city.
Parks and Recreation
Whether you’re looking for the perfect picnic spot or a challenging, backcountry hike, Meridian is a great home base for the great outdoors. You can’t go more than a few blocks without hitting a public park, so you’ll never be far from a splash pad, a bocce court or a cutthroat pickleball competition. Kleiner Memorial Park has stocked fishing ponds, a community garden and even its own labyrinth — the perfect place for your family to go when you tell them to get lost. Frisbee linksmen will want to show off their skills at Bear Creek Park’s 9-hole disc golf course, and pups can perform feats of canine agility in the Storey Bark Park, which has seesaws, hopping stools and all the ramps and rings Rover can stand to race through. One of the most elaborate green spaces in the city is Discovery Park, which has an incredible skate park and bike pump track, zip lines, a climbing wall and roller slides.
Practicing those features will set you up well for the adventures that await you outside of Meridian. If your family is into cycling, hop on your bikes and take the Boise River Greenbelt to Lucky Peak State Park, where you can lounge on the beach, rent paddleboards or even try wakeboarding.
Need a real escape? Why not embrace yurt life for the weekend? Lake Cascade State Park can set your crew up in a rustic-but-robust tent built for off-grid, communal living — Wi-Fi-free, that is. Gear up for a weekend of boating, bunk bedding and cookstove cuisine, where you can fry up the freshly caught trout and salmon and settle in for an evening of board games, ghost stories and lots of s’mores.
Of course, the Boise National Forest has 2.5 million acres to explore, so lace up those hiking boots and pick your path. Peakbaggers will want to snag the bragging rights of summiting Steel Mountain, but the real joy of this 9,728-foot apex is the wildflower-laden vistas you’ll pass along your climb. On the range’s southwestern edge, you’ll find Bogus Basin, a, like, totally legit mountain playground, where you can tackle ropes courses and a gravity park in the summer and ski slopes in the winter. Bogus also has Idaho’s only mountain coaster, and it’s radical.
When we say that Meridian is family-friendly, we don’t just mean for humans. The Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area is thought to have the largest concentration of nesting, feathered predators in the entire world. Hundreds of owls, eagles, and hawks convene here for a bird-of-prey meetup every year, shacking up in the cracks and crevices of the cliffs overlooking the Snake River. Sure, the fishing is good, but we all know that these randy raptors pick this spot for the romantic view. You can observe their raucous courtship rituals — if you dare — or visit some of the more PG-rated areas, like Swan Falls or Crater Rings National Natural Landmark, where subsiding ancient magma left behind amphitheatrical “collapse craters” in its wake.
Locals’ Favorite Hangouts and Traditions
One of the biggest perks of living in a close-knit community like Meridian are the traditions, whether its little things, like buying a loaf of homemade rye at the Meridian Main Street Market or getting a big group together for Sparklight Movie Nights in Settlers Park. There’s always something going on in Meridian.
One of the favorite gathering spots in town is The Village at Meridian, a shopping center that’s also the center of activities, from boat shows to wine tastings to line dancing on Big Al’s Patio. In the wintertime, Scentsy’s Christmas Lights Ceremony makes Meridian luminesce with holiday spirit. Nearly 1 million LEDs dazzle revelers and skaters taking advantage of the seasonal ice rink that opens each November. Unlike the sponsors signature candles, the light display isn’t yet aromatic, but we’re hoping an olfactory experience is in the works. We think Santa would surely approve of a gingerbread-scented tree.
Traffic congestion may be worsening by the minute in Meridian, but there’s never a slow lane at the Meridian Speedway. In the spring, one of our favorite events is the Busch Light Boat Bash of Destruction, where dozens of watercrafts already destined for Davy Jones’ Locker meet their end with a smash instead of a splash. While there are plenty of high-speed, head-spinning races at Meridian, it’s hard not to love the Demolition Derby during Meridian’s Dairy Days. Maybe we’re just suckers for cathartically destructive action.
The derby isn’t the only family fun to have during the annual Dairy Days — this citywide festival has a nearly 100-year history of good, clean, milk-centric fun. Each year, Meridians look forward to the 4H goat and cattle shows, the dizzying carnival rides, the literally cheesy parade, and the crowning of the Dairy Days Princess. Maybe the next in line to the throne is in your family!
Meridian may not have some of the perks of the big city, like major art collections or even major-league sports, but it does have a couple of quirky retail establishments that are entertainments all their own. One of these is the Astro Gallery of Gems Idaho. A true diamond in the rough of jewelry stores, this not-so-humble “rock shop” trades in wares befitting the Gem State — rare minerals. Truly the place to shop for the hard-to-shop for, you can pick up that 450-million-year-old trilobite fossil from the Ordovician Period or a tyrannosaurus rex tibia for a cool $95K. If meteorites are more your astrophysical speed, you’ll find a nice selection of stony-iron slabs sparkling with olivine crystals. And, of course, there are precious and semi-precious stones here, too. Snag that uncut star ruby you’ve always wanted or apologize the expensive way with a dazzling diamond and tourmaline band.
When you just want a little retail therapy, there is the psyche-soothing shopping experience of Scheels. Equal parts theme park and department store, this is the place to take your family when you are having a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” The grumpy Alexanders of your crew will be all smiles after a whirl on the Ferris wheel, a spin at the arcade games or with a mouthful of homemade fudge from this store for the bored. You can selfie with Bigfoot as you shop for school clothes or golf clubs or metal detectors that will keep your kids and in-laws out of the house for hours looking for lost treasures.
But Living in Meridian Is Not All Perfect
The Real Cost of Living in Meridian
What happens when a city’s population doubles almost overnight? Everything suddenly feels very crowded. Since 2010, Meridian has expanded faster than almost any other city in Idaho, growing from 75,000 to 140,000. The surging population density has made drivers feel squeezed, and the lengthier commute times have made some demand wider roads to accommodate all the new vehicle traffic. While this plan often seems logical, many studies have shown that adding lanes does the opposite — it encourages more drivers to get out on them — perhaps Meridian won’t fall into the traffic trap that has snared so many cities before it.
Another pitfall of suddenly having more neighbors? Well, it’s not more neighborhood picnics. Meridian’s real estate market used to be modest, but now — defying its own name — housing prices have soared far above the middle of the field and are now some of the most expensive in the region. The median home value in Meridian is now $485,000 — shockingly high for a city that most Americans can’t even locate in the correct state. Renters also struggle to keep up, with the median rate topping $1,700/month. Remote workers have moved here looking for more room but may find themselves also looking for a roomie to keep up with the bills. Whether you’re hoping to own your own home or rent one, you’ll be paying more in Meridian than in any other major city in the state, including Boise, Nampa, Caldwell and Idaho Falls.
But it’s not all bad news for incoming Meridians. Income levels in this suburb far exceed anything else in the region, and easily top the national average, too. The median household income in Meridian is nearly $100,000, compared to the $80,000 U.S. average, so it may be easier to afford those higher-priced homes…even if it takes you a lot longer to get back to them each evening.
Weather and Air Quality
If there’s one thing that the nation’s two Meridians have in common, it’s sweltering summers. Temperatures in the Treasure Valley can heat up hotter than the middle of Mississippi, with summertime highs averaging in the 90s F and 100s F. In the past twenty years, Meridian has even hit the 110°F-mark multiple times, which we think officially classifies the city as a large household appliance — you may be able to bake a russet potato right on your driveway — real bragging rights for an Idahoan. The biggest difference between these cross-country twins is the humidity. In the semi-arid environment of Idaho, you’ll be lucky to see more than 13 inches of rain a year, and the nighttime air will feel like a cool glass of lemonade, compared to its Southern counterpart, which might be closer to a heavy mug of chowder.
Of all the treasures of the Treasure Valley, one of them is not its large store of small, airborne particulates. Smoke from wildfires, exhaust from cars and trucks and even dust and plant materials can easily get trapped in this stubborn region between the mountains, where the air tends to stagnate. Take those air quality warnings seriously when they’re issued.
While wintertime in Meridian isn’t to be taken lightly, you likely won’t need the serious everyday gear that you’d perish without in other northern climes. The average low is a manageable 27 F, and snow doesn’t usually exceed 18 inches. On occasion, though, you’ll have A Very Idaho Moment, when the lows plunge to double-negative digits, and you think, Man, am I glad there’s a direct flight to Orlando from Boise. Tell Mickey we say hi!
Tips for a Smooth Move to Meridian
Find a Trustworthy Mover
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Consider Moving Full Service
Are you moving cross-country to Meridian, Idaho? If so, take advantage of Mayflower’s full-service moving packages. A personal moving coordinator will handle all the details of your move, and packages can be customized to your needs. Want to store some of your belongings during and after your move? No problem! Wondering how to ship your car? Mayflower can handle it. We can also provide packing and unpacking services and remove moving debris from your home.
If you’re relocating from another city in the Gem State — or are looking for a local mover in the greater Boise area — Mayflower’s interstate Idaho agents/movers can assist you with your move independently under their own businesses and brands.
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You’ll find all of this and more on our moving blog, with the very latest tips in Welcome HOME magazine. Wonder how Meridian stacks up to other cities in the Treasure Valley, or want to see what living in a totally different state would be like? We’ve got hundreds of guides to cities and states across the U.S. — we want to help you to find the perfect place to live!
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