The Back Forty: Exploring Albion, Idaho

This month on The Back Forty, we’re heading to south-central Idaho to explore Albion: a tiny, history-rich agricultural town nestled at the base of the remote Albion Mountains. Haley is joined by Chris Corroon, a frequent visitor to Albion, to chat about what drew him to this quiet corner of the west. Chris gives us his review of Albion’s many perks, including unbeatable skiing, rugged recreation, and an authentic rural community. From mouthwatering biscuits and gravy to jaw-dropping ranch land, Albion offers a laid-back mountain town experience that’s hard to find and even harder to leave.

Topics

[0:00] Welcome Back: Chris Corroon’s connection to Albion

[3:29] What Makes Albion Unique?

[5:48] Recreation in Albion

[6:50] Best Time of Year to Visit Albion

[8:21] Why Albion?

[10:30] Downtown Albion

[12:25] Who Lives in Albion?

[13:05] See You in Albion!

Haley (00:06):

Welcome back to the Land Bulletin podcast, where every other week we bring you experts in the field to impart their knowledge when it comes to the ranch and sporting property market, buying and selling advice, the latest, best stewardship practices, as well as topics that impact landowners every day. I’m your host, Haley Mirr. Let’s jump in. 

Welcome back to the Land Bullets and Podcast. It’s Haley Mirr here, and today we’re going to be continuing in our series called The Back 40, where we look at towns without Throughout the West that maybe you’re not as familiar with sections of the West, these different states that you might’ve driven before but have never really known about. So today we’re looking actually in an area called Albion, Idaho and what better person to talk about that area of the West than Chris Corroon. So welcome to the podcast, Chris.

Chris (00:53):

Thanks, Hailey.

Haley (00:54):

Before we get started, kind of what was the first time that you were brought to Albion? I’d love to know what brought you to that area and what’s drawn you to it ever since?

Chris (01:05):

Yeah, so Albion to me was, I think most of my associates now that I had spent 30 some odd years in the Hebrew Valley outside of Park City and in a wonderful community, which is now a really busy community. That county, Wasatch County is one of the fastest growing counties in the country. And I worked at all three ski resorts up in the Park City area during the nineties, and it was a wonderful town. And then when I settled and got married and had kids, I was really looking for a similar type of experience that I had growing up as a kid, skiing at a mom and pop ski area with my family, with my parents, and my five siblings. So I went on a quest to find one of the nicer, smaller ski resorts in Idaho, really beyond Targe or some of these other places that have gotten really busy and expensive.

(02:10):

I came across Poer and I did that based on research of snow totals and whatnot. So it was really this little ski resort called Poer, which is located in Albion Mountains that drew me to that community and my wife and I went skiing up there. We tested out a couple of smaller ski areas in the southern Idaho and we came across Palmer Allen and I rented a little VRBO. I remember it was the first weekend after the new year, like four years ago. Basically fell in love with the place. Skiing was amazing. They had a lot of snow. And I remember that particular weekend, it was in first week of January, the Utah Resorts Deer Valley, which is where I used to ski, had no snow and Palmer Skiing was amazing

Haley (03:05):

Hammered.

Chris (03:07):

That’s what drew me there. And then we looked and looked around and ended up buying a small property, small ranch of our own. So yeah, it’s a great community. It’s, I’d call it a mountain town, albeit it’s not developed. It’s very much of an agricultural community, and that’s kind of how I came across the place.

Haley (03:33):

And what makes Albion a little bit more unique that when compared to other towns in Idaho,

Chris (03:38):

It’s a small community with a lot of history. It was a stopping place, I think for the Oregon Trail. So there’s a lot of history there. There’s a lot of history, kind of Mormon pioneer history and just trading history and history of Native American settlements there as well. And it is very much of a, there’s not a lot around it, it’s just this side of early Idaho, which is a smaller community, but also there’s a Walmart in Burley. It’s right on the Snake River. And that whole area is very heavily defined by its farming and sugar beets and hay and other commodities, but it’s kind out in the middle of nowhere to some extent, even though it is close to Burle, it’s in that part of Idaho. It’s south central Idaho. It’s kind of high desert, Albion. The beauty of Albion is it sits at the base of the Albion Mountains.

(04:48):

Albion Mountains is part of it’s kind, I guess a sub range of the Sawtooth or Sawtooth Mountains or Sawtooth National Forest. Anyway, so that’s part of the Sawtooth National Forest. But there’s some good elevations. It’s a smaller mountain range, but beautiful area. A lot of good recreation up there. It’s near the City of Rocks, not too far from the City of Rocks in the communities of Almo and Alba, which are really cool areas. And even Malta, Idaho, which I really like is close by. We actually have some really cool ranch listing there, which is nice. But the beauty of all of this is it’s from my standpoint, my office is in Salt Lake. I live in Salt Lake area, but I always wanted to find a second home that was within two and a half hours from Salt Lake City. So from that standpoint, it really worked out well.

Haley (05:48):

So I guess you’ve talked about the skiing. Are there other things that might attract tourists to this area? Recreational, things like that?

Chris (05:55):

Yeah, city Rocks. There’s some fishing. I wouldn’t say there’s a heavy tourism base there, but it’s a great area for, I mean, I talked to a lot of my clients that are ranchers. Alban is a lot more affordable, especially for a young farmer or rancher that wanted to get started. Even though there’s a lack of good stuff for sale, there’s still opportunities to buy out there. We’ve got a great listing in multi Idaho that’s four and a half million dollars on, and it’s got a ton of potential and you’d be hard pressed to find anything like that up in Summit County.

Haley (06:40):

Yeah, well, that’s what makes it so nice is it’s accessible, but you’re not paying the prices that you might see in some of these other mountain towns. What is the best time of year? I know you have a place up there. What’s the best time of year to visit Albion?

Chris (06:58):

I’d say really year round.

Haley (07:00):

Yeah,

Chris (07:01):

Spring, obviously I was up there last weekend. It’s spectacular. It’s green, but I’m a winter guy, so I really enjoy the winters up there. Summer’s beautiful. Obviously if you’re a Salt Lake family that wants to departure from say, Driggs or Sun Valley or Summit County, park City, then Alban is a great place. There’s some ends there. There’s some really cool vrbo. You can drive up to the ski resort and hike around and it’s super quiet and there’s a cool little restaurant in town. My favorite spot is the gas station Biscuits and Gravy. But yeah, it’s a great weekend getaway for somebody that wants to just, and it’s affordable, obviously it’s not too expensive. City Rocks has some great camping spots for City Rocks. It’s a national reserve and it’s got really interesting rock formations. There’s a lot of climbers, technical climbers that go out there and there’s some really cool RV places and camping spots.

Haley (08:11):

So year round sounds like a pretty awesome spot to put your camper or do something like that. And just from an investments perspective, we’ve kind of talked about pricing and things, but if I’m looking for a ranch and I’m kind of between a couple different areas in the near that region, what would cause me to want to invest in a ranch near Albion?

Chris (08:31):

Well, we have some good grazing property for sale. We have some smaller grazing properties. We also have what I think is probably one of the nicer ranches listed that I’ve been on, and I’ve been on a lot of properties and all over Utah and southern Idaho. We’ve got this 3,300 acre ranch listed just outside of Albion and probably one of the more incredible properties I’ve been on just from a sense of arrival and location relative to, it’s a north facing property with two major drainages in it. And to me, those properties are hard to find. So that property would be three times what the value is and say Summit or maybe even four times Summit Morgan County. And again, it’s probably nicer than anything I’ve seen in the Wasatch back or is nice. So that’s kind of the draw. You don’t have to be a billionaire to live in Albion. You might have to have some capacity, but it’s still much more affordable. And I’d say you don’t even have to be a multimillionaire. So it’s definitely within reach of a lot more of a buyer base.

Haley (09:51):

What’s like the makeup or the fabric of the type of buyers that own land up there? Is it a lot of kind of families? Is it larger cattle operations? What do you see in the market? Scape up there,

Chris (10:06):

Albion is mostly smaller families. There’s, there’s a handful of large multi-generational ranching families. You get us out of Albion into the county up by Burley and they’re larger, bigger that have larger holdings in the area, but still very much family oriented area, which is great.

Haley (10:29):

So I’ve never been to Albion and full disclosure, I don’t know what it looks like, but is it like a main town with the main street going through at a few shops here and there? What’s kind of the amenities that you might find?

Chris (10:40):

It’s a great question and it’s probably what attracted our family to Albion is it’s got the infrastructure is you pull into the community into the main drag, so to speak, and you’ve got some beautiful old growth trees. So you can tell it’s a historic town. There’s some cool older buildings and it’s just got a very really neat sense of arrival as most of us who’ve been driven throughout the country or throughout the west. When you come into an area that it’s been well maintained, there’s good people there, it’s got a good history. I can’t say that about a lot of rural areas of certainly Utah and Idaho, but this particular area, probably because it has so much history with the normal school, which was built there in, I believe in the 1920s or thirties. But there’s a lot there and it’s a really nice sense of place. And even the listings that we’ve have there, they’ve all got really just good sense of arrivals and you don’t have to drive through public land or somebody else’s private land to get to these properties. All of them are accessible year round. So re has its own kind of native flock of wild turkeys that hang around town, which is kind of unique.

Haley (12:07):

So is hunting kind of big up there?

Chris (12:10):

Well, this is just kind of, I think it may be some of these domestic turkeys, but I think they look like wild turkeys, but they’re there and it’s kind of fun. Every time you drive through town, they’re crossing the road. So that’s the how, that’s the only time there’s a traffic jam in Albion.

Haley (12:29):

And what are the locals, I always wonder who are the people that actually live here, the people that aren’t the secondary homeowners and things like that.

Chris (12:37):

There are people that are from the area. There’s people that have certainly moved in from other parts of the country, but they’re all pretty intent on keeping Albion Albion, which is great. Keeping that rural character and preserving their farming and ranching heritage, which is another reason that I kind of attracted me to that community.

Haley (13:07):

Is there anything about this area in particular, Chris, that kind of make it unique or specific compared to other towns that you’ve worked in?

Chris (13:17):

Yeah, I think Albion, it’s really out there. And again, you kind of drive through that high desert and you come across this oasis at the base of the mountains. Because of that, it’s really unique. You have the Albian Mountain range as the backdrop, so very picture ask. And again, that’s kind of hard to come by. And I do like the fact too that there’s no fast, there’s not one fast food establishment there. So there’s some good cinnamon rolls and homemade pizza. Then there’s a new coffee shop called Mountain Mama’s, which is great too. But that’s about it. That’s all we really need.

Haley (14:07):

We should start a little Google Earth map with pins of all these different restaurants that we all kind of swear by in these towns. It’s fun to have those on your bucket list. Yeah, I guess, are there any other kind of, who are some of your favorite characters or business owners in the

Chris (14:22):

Area? Well, one business, which I forgot is Piggy Sue’s Barbecue, which is right on the main dragon in Alban. So I think it’s kind of nice that there’s, with Mountain Mamas, I say that’s two women owned, owned businesses. The other thing I would hate to forget is Albion Mercantile, and we go there as many times as we can when they’re open because they have the best ice cream and they have a lot of good provisions. So my kids love getting ice cream there. We take our little side by side and venture into town. It’s a lot of fun.

Haley (15:00):

That’s so fun. I haven’t had lunch, so all of this is sounding really good. So Peggy Sue, mountain Mama, and the Mercantile. I got it. I’ve already remembered it. Awesome. Well, I’m excited to, once I get some free time, now that it’s summer, I don’t really have any, but to make a trip up

Chris (15:18):

There, you have a place to stay.

Haley (15:21):

Well, thanks Chris for coming on the show and letting us know a little bit about Alion. If you guys have questions about the listings that we have available in this area or just want to know the makeup of the region, let us know or give Chris a direct call. He’s happy to chat about it. So thanks for listening.

Chris (15:38):

Thanks Haley.

Haley (15:40):

Thanks for joining us today. To learn more about the ranch real estate market or our ranch marketing process, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter on our [email protected] or give us a call at three six two three four five four five. See you next time.