Paul, ID

Paul is a Minidoka County city with 1,195 residents in the 2020 census, five miles north of Burley and six miles west of Rupert. Idaho State Highway 25 runs east-west through town, and Highway 27 heads south, so Paul sits in the middle of the county’s farm-and-factory road network. The city is small, but the sugar beet industry is not: Paul is home to Amalgamated Sugar’s second-largest sugar beet factory in the United States, with farms and processing shaping the surrounding landscape.

The factory’s scale is the local giveaway: agriculture is not background scenery here, either. Minidoka County Schools serve local students through Paul Elementary, West Minico Middle, and Minico High in Rupert. Agriculture-related businesses and local government are major employment threads, while Burley and Rupert handle larger shopping and county services. Paul was founded in 1907 and named after engineer Charles H. Paul, whose work tied him to the Minidoka Project. It’s a highway city with a sugar-beet backbone.