Kenai Peninsula Borough area

Population and density of Kenai Peninsula Borough

The Census Bureau estimates that 61,951 people lived in Kenai Peninsula Borough on July 1, 2025. That ranks #888 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #4 of 30 in Alaska. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 58,797, the population has grown by 3,154 (+5.4%), compared with +0.5% for Alaska as a whole.

With 16,017.1 square miles of land, that is 3.9 people per square mile (1.5 per km²), placing Kenai Peninsula Borough #2,916 nationally for density and #5 in Alaska. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Alaska median is 0.73. Put another way, there are about 165 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 Kenai Peninsula Borough

6 incorporated places lie at least partly in Kenai Peninsula Borough. Together they are home to 22,602 people (36.5%); the other 39,349 (63.5%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Kenai city, with 7,924 residents in the county. The county seat, Soldotna city, has 4,615 residents. Among places with at least 1,000 residents in 2020, Homer city grew fastest since then (+14.6%).

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

Metropolitan area

Kenai Peninsula 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

15 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Kenai Peninsula Borough, and each lies mostly inside the county.

995569956899572996039960599610996119963199635996399966399664996699967299682

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 Kenai Peninsula Borough

Kenai Peninsula Borough shares a land border with 6 county equivalents. It has more land than 3 of them. The largest neighbor is Bethel Census Area (40,654.9 mi²) and the smallest is Anchorage Municipality (1,706.8 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Kenai Peninsula Borough forms a block of 123,242.7 mi² of land, of which it holds 13%.

How big is Kenai Peninsula Borough compared with U.S. states?

Kenai Peninsula Borough has more land than 9 of the 50 states. It is about 1.6 times the land area of Maryland (9,711 mi²), while West Virginia, the next larger state, has 1.5 times as much land (24,041.4 mi²). Alaska’s county land could hold about 36 areas the size of Kenai Peninsula Borough.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 126.6 miles (203.7 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 Kenai Peninsula Borough?

Kenai Peninsula Borough has more land than 3,206 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 Kenai Peninsula Borough at #10 nationally by total area, 6 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 35.2%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 34 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 Kenai Peninsula 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.