Baxter County area

Population and density of Baxter County

The Census Bureau estimates that 42,982 people lived in Baxter County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #1,153 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #16 of 75 in Arkansas. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 41,634, the population has grown by 1,348 (+3.2%), compared with +3.4% for Arkansas as a whole.

With 553.9 square miles of land, that is 78 people per square mile (30 per km²), placing Baxter County #1,184 nationally for density and #13 in Arkansas. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Arkansas median is 28. Put another way, there are about 8.2 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 Baxter County

8 incorporated places lie at least partly in Baxter County. Together they are home to 18,660 people (43.4%); the other 24,322 (56.6%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Mountain Home city, with 13,373 residents in the county. Among places with at least 1,000 residents in 2020, Mountain Home city grew fastest since then (+4.3%).

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

Metropolitan area

Baxter County is a central county of the Mountain Home, AR Micropolitan Statistical Area. Baxter County is the area’s only county equivalent, so the micro area has the same 553.9 square miles of land. By combined land it ranks #397 of 542 micropolitan areas, and #293 by population.

ZIP codes

12 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Baxter County; 10 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

725197253172537725447261772623726267263572642726517265372658

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 Baxter County

Baxter County shares a land border with 6 county equivalents, including 1 in Missouri. Each of them has more land than Baxter County. The largest neighbor is Ozark County (745 mi²) and the smallest is Izard County (580.2 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Baxter County forms a block of 4,366 mi² of land, of which it holds 12.7%.

How big is Baxter County compared with U.S. states?

Baxter County has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 1.9 times as much. Arkansas’s county land could hold about 94 areas the size of Baxter County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 23.5 miles (37.9 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 Baxter County?

Baxter County has more land than 1,345 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 Baxter County at #1,793 nationally by total area, 84 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 5.6%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 4.4 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 Baxter County 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.