Homes for Sale in Owyhee County, Idaho

Not broadly, and Owyhee County's own towns - Homedale and Marsing, covered in depth elsewhere in this build - have each posted price gains rather than declines through 2026. See Homedale's page or Marsing's page for specific figures.

"Owyhee" is an older phonetic spelling of "Hawaii" - the county was named after three Hawaiian fur trappers who went missing while exploring the river in 1819 and were never found.

• "Owyhee" and "Hawaii" are two spellings of the same word, from a period when English speakers rendered Hawaiian phonetically in different ways.
• The trappers worked for the North West Company, exploring the river region on behalf of the fur trade.
• Their disappearance is why the river, and later the county, carry the name.

Neither Homedale nor Marsing ranks as Idaho's single cheapest town - that distinction belongs to Weiser and Payette by one 2026 index - but both run well under the Boise metro's own median.

Owyhee County's population was 11,913 at the 2020 Census, with a 2025 estimate of roughly 12,660-12,750 - modest, stable growth rather than rapid change.

California and Washington supply the largest shares of Idaho's incoming out-of-state residents - the two have traded the top spot in recent years, with the most current Census Bureau data showing Washington narrowly ahead - a statewide pattern that applies to Owyhee County the same as anywhere else in the state.

Homedale (the largest city), Murphy (the county seat), Marsing, Grand View (population 440 at the 2020 Census, on the Snake River), and the historic ghost town of Silver City, once a gold and silver mining town of about 2,500 people and now a National Register of Historic Places site.

Idaho's smallest incorporated cities have populations in the single digits to low dozens - the ten smallest combined total only 267 people statewide - and none of them sits in Owyhee County specifically; this is a statewide trivia answer rather than a local one.

The Owyhee River is nationally known among whitewater rafters as one of the most spectacular and remote desert rivers in the country, running through deep canyons in one of the least-populated regions of the lower 48 states.

• The 2009 Omnibus Public Lands Management Act designated 316 miles of the Owyhee and its tributaries as Wild and Scenic Rivers and set aside 517,000 acres as wilderness.
• The Owyhee River Wilderness itself covers 267,328 acres, managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
• Rafting trips range from a one-day float to a week-long expedition running Class V whitewater, starting in Nevada and running north through Idaho and Oregon.

"Owyhee" is pronounced oh-WYE-hee, reflecting its origin as a phonetic rendering of "Hawaii."