Sebastian County area

Population and density of Sebastian County

The Census Bureau estimates that 130,641 people lived in Sebastian County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #509 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #6 of 75 in Arkansas. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 127,799, the population has grown by 2,842 (+2.2%), compared with +3.4% for Arkansas as a whole.

With 531.2 square miles of land, that is 246 people per square mile (95 per km²), placing Sebastian County #580 nationally for density and #4 in Arkansas. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Arkansas median is 28. Put another way, there are about 2.6 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 Sebastian County

11 incorporated places lie at least partly in Sebastian County. Together they are home to 112,452 people (86.1%); the other 18,189 (13.9%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Fort Smith city, with 90,855 residents in the county. Among places with at least 1,000 residents in 2020, Barling city grew fastest since then (+14.1%).

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

Metropolitan area

Sebastian County is a central county of the Fort Smith, AR-OK Metropolitan Statistical Area. Its 3 county equivalents have 234,140 residents on 1,800 square miles of land; Sebastian County accounts for 29.5% of the land and 55.8% of the residents. By combined land it ranks #174 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #207 by population.

ZIP codes

17 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Sebastian County; 14 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

7290172903729047290572908729167292372927729307293372936729377293872940729417294472945

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 Sebastian County

Sebastian County shares a land border with 6 county equivalents, including 2 in Oklahoma. Each of them has more land than Sebastian County. The largest neighbor is Le Flore County (1,589.4 mi²) and the smallest is Crawford County (595.3 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Sebastian County forms a block of 5,600.4 mi² of land, of which it holds 9.5%.

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

Sebastian 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 98 areas the size of Sebastian County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 23 miles (37.1 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 Sebastian County?

Sebastian County has more land than 1,249 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 Sebastian County at #2,024 nationally by total area, 51 places farther from the top than its land rank. Other county equivalents gain more area when their water measurements are included.

Its water share is 2.4%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 1.3 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 Sebastian 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.