Chugach Census Area area

Population and density of Chugach Census Area

The Census Bureau estimates that 6,553 people lived in Chugach Census Area on July 1, 2025. That ranks #2,772 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #15 of 30 in Alaska. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 7,107, the population has declined by 554 (−7.8%), compared with +0.5% for Alaska as a whole.

With 9,574.5 square miles of land, that is 0.68 people per square mile (0.26 per km²), placing Chugach Census Area #3,181 nationally for density and #16 in Alaska. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Alaska median is 0.73. Put another way, there are about 935 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 Chugach Census Area

3 incorporated places lie at least partly in Chugach Census Area. Together they are home to 6,331 people (96.6%); the other 222 (3.4%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Valdez city, with 3,681 residents in the county.

Population: U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 subcounty estimates, counting only the part of each place inside Chugach Census Area. Land: 2026 Census Gazetteer, for the whole place even where it extends into other counties. How communities are listed.

Metropolitan area

Chugach Census Area 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

4 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Chugach Census Area, and each lies mostly inside the county.

99574996779968699693

ZIP Code Tabulation Areas are the Census Bureau’s approximations of USPS ZIP Code service areas, from the 2020 Census relationship files. Post-office-box and single-address ZIP Codes have no tabulation area.

Counties bordering Chugach Census Area

Chugach Census Area shares a land border with 5 county equivalents. It has more land than 2 of them. The largest neighbor is Matanuska-Susitna Borough (24,703 mi²) and the smallest is Anchorage Municipality (1,706.8 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Chugach Census Area forms a block of 84,285.6 mi² of land, of which it holds 11.4%.

How big is Chugach Census Area compared with U.S. states?

Chugach Census Area has more land than 8 of the 50 states. It is about 1 times the land area of Vermont (9,217.3 mi²), while Maryland, the next larger state, has 1 times as much land (9,711 mi²). Alaska’s county land could hold about 60 areas the size of Chugach Census Area.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 97.8 miles (157.5 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 Chugach Census Area?

Chugach Census Area has more land than 3,195 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 Chugach Census Area at #17 nationally by total area, 10 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 37%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 35.8 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 Chugach Census Area 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.