Bristol Bay Borough area

Population and density of Bristol Bay Borough

The Census Bureau estimates that 847 people lived in Bristol Bay Borough on July 1, 2025. That ranks #3,192 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #29 of 30 in Alaska. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 841, the population has grown by 6 (+0.7%), compared with +0.5% for Alaska as a whole.

With 481.4 square miles of land, that is 1.8 people per square mile (0.68 per km²), placing Bristol Bay Borough #3,088 nationally for density and #10 in Alaska. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Alaska median is 0.73. Put another way, there are about 364 acres of land per resident.

U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 population estimates. Estimates are revised each year and are not decennial census counts. Density divides the whole population by the whole county’s land area, so it describes an average, not how settlement is distributed within the county. Population sources and methods.

Cities and towns in Bristol Bay Borough

Bristol Bay Borough has no incorporated cities, towns or villages. All 847 of its residents live in unincorporated communities, which the Census Bureau describes as census-designated places rather than municipalities.

Metropolitan area

Bristol Bay Borough is not part of any metropolitan or micropolitan statistical area in the Office of Management and Budget’s July 2023 delineation; 1,306 other county equivalents are also outside one. These areas are built around an urban core of at least 10,000 people plus the counties tied to it by commuting, so counties outside them are generally rural.

ZIP codes

3 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Bristol Bay Borough; 2 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

996139963399670

ZIP Code Tabulation Areas are the Census Bureau’s approximations of USPS ZIP Code service areas, from the 2020 Census relationship files. Lighter codes have less than half of their land in this county. Post-office-box and single-address ZIP Codes have no tabulation area.

Counties bordering Bristol Bay Borough

Bristol Bay Borough shares a land border with 1 county equivalent. Lake and Peninsula Borough has 49.6 times its land area.

How big is Bristol Bay Borough compared with U.S. states?

Bristol Bay Borough has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 2.1 times as much. Alaska’s county land could hold about 1,187 areas the size of Bristol Bay Borough.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 21.9 miles (35.3 km) on each side. Real county shapes are rarely square, so this is a scale reference rather than a width or driving distance.

State figures are the sums of each state’s county-equivalent land measurements in the same Census release, so states and counties are compared on the same basis. Published state totals can differ slightly because of rounding. Compare all states · Counties bigger than entire states.

What stands out about Bristol Bay Borough?

Bristol Bay Borough has more land than 1,070 of the other 3,221 county equivalents in the dataset.

A median is the middle county-equivalent measurement, not the average of the largest and smallest. All three bars use the same linear scale. Very small areas may appear as a thin sliver; the labels retain their values.

Does including water change its rank?

Using land plus water places Bristol Bay Borough at #1,089 nationally by total area, 1,063 places closer to the top than its land rank. The water assigned to this geography moves it ahead of some county equivalents with more land.

Its water share is 43.3%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 42.1 percentage points higher. This describes the statistical geography’s land/water mix, not flood exposure or developable land.

Closest positions in the national land ranking

These entries sit immediately beside Bristol Bay Borough in the national ranking. They can be in different states and are not necessarily geographic neighbors.

Calculated from the same Census release as the area table. Total-area order uses original ALAND + AWATER; water shares and chart labels use published square miles. Calculation details.