Albion, ID

Albion is a Cassia County city in Idaho’s Albion Valley, part of the Burley micropolitan area. The 2020 census counted 234 residents. Settlers reached the valley in the early 1870s, and Albion became Cassia County’s seat in 1879. The city sits among farmland and the mountains of south-central Idaho, a place where the old county-seat role remains visible even though the courthouse function moved to Burley in 1918. The valley’s irrigation and grain fields frame the city on every side.

Education gives Albion its most distinctive historic layer. Albion State Normal School opened in 1893 to train Idaho teachers; its programs transferred to Idaho State College in Pocatello after the school closed in 1951. The old campus was later leased to the Churches of Christ for Magic Valley Christian College, which became part of Pepperdine College. The campus’s buildings and grounds still carry that sequence of state education, religious college work, and local preservation. Albion is a small valley city whose importance once came from county government and teacher training.