Very few, once you insist on a source. The lists that circulate under this question are mostly copied from each other and almost never cite anything. Below are the public figures whose Boise-area residence is either stated by the person themselves or reported by a named outlet, with the year of the report. Addresses and neighbourhoods are not on this page, and no one is listed on the strength of a rumour.
Named by themselves or by a named outlet
Anthony Doerr, novelist. His own biography says plainly: “Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho.” He won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for All the Light We Cannot See, and Idaho News 6 described him as a resident of Boise when the prize was announced in April 2015. Cloud Cuckoo Land was a National Book Award finalist in 2021.
Kristin Armstrong, cyclist. Her own site says “Kristin and her family continue to reside in Boise, Idaho.” She won the Olympic time trial three times running — Beijing in 2008, London in 2012, Rio in 2016. The City of Boise renamed Municipal Park after her on 28 August 2016, calling her “the Boise cyclist”; the 28-acre park on the river carries her name.
Doug Martsch, of Built to Spill. Boise State Public Radio reported in February 2013 that the band is a Boise band and that Martsch “still calls Boise home”. That report is now more than a decade old, which is exactly the caveat this kind of list usually leaves out.
Why the lists you find are unreliable
Nobody publishes a register of where public figures live, so these pages are assembled from old interviews, property listings and each other. Three failure modes recur.
The first is staleness. Aaron Paul appears on nearly every such list. He is an Idaho native, from Emmett, and the Idaho Press reported in July 2022 that he was selling his Boise house — “the first home the television star ever purchased in the City of Trees” — while keeping a place in McCall. A list that still files him under Boise residents is citing a fact that stopped being true.
The second is the state standing in for the city. Sun Valley, McCall and Coeur d’Alene are not Boise, and a list of Idaho celebrities relabelled as a Boise list does not answer this question.
The third is that no source is given at all. If a name appears without an outlet and a date behind it, treat it as unverified.
Notable people from Boise
The better-documented question is who came from here, and that list is older and firmer.
Frank Church was born in Boise on 25 July 1924 and represented Idaho in the U.S. Senate from 3 January 1957 to 3 January 1981. The Senate’s own biography credits him with floor-managing the Wilderness Act of 1964, writing the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968, and chairing the 1975 select committee that investigated the intelligence agencies. Boise State’s Frank Church Institute, inside its School of Public Service, carries his name.
Gene Harris, the jazz pianist, moved to Boise after semi-retiring in 1977 and stayed until his death in 2000 at 66. The city renamed the Julia Davis Park bandshell for him that same year, and Boise State’s jazz festival has carried his name since 1998, when he helped found it.
If a name is missing here, it is because no source could be found for it, not because the person is unknown. How many people live in Boise answers the version of this question with actual numbers behind it.