Modoc County area

Population and density of Modoc County

The Census Bureau estimates that 8,426 people lived in Modoc County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #2,623 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #56 of 58 in California. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 8,707, the population has declined by 281 (−3.2%), compared with −0.5% for California as a whole.

With 3,948.2 square miles of land, that is 2.1 people per square mile (0.82 per km²), placing Modoc County #3,050 nationally for density and #56 in California. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the California median is 112. Put another way, there are about 300 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 Modoc County

1 incorporated place lies at least partly in Modoc County. Together they are home to 2,634 people (31.3%); the other 5,792 (68.7%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Alturas city, with 2,634 residents in the county.

Metropolitan area

Modoc County 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

13 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Modoc County; 11 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

96006960159605496056961019610496108961109611296115961169613497635

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 Modoc County

Modoc County shares a land border with 6 county equivalents, including 3 in Nevada and Oregon. It has more land than 1 of them. The largest neighbor is Lake County (8,138.6 mi²) and the smallest is Shasta County (3,775.6 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Modoc County forms a block of 38,948.4 mi² of land, of which it holds 10.1%.

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

Modoc County has more land than 2 of the 50 states. It is about 2 times the land area of Delaware (1,948.6 mi²), while Connecticut, the next larger state, has 1.2 times as much land (4,842.5 mi²). California’s county land could hold about 39 areas the size of Modoc County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 62.8 miles (101.1 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 Modoc County?

Modoc County has more land than 3,096 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 Modoc County at #122 nationally by total area, 4 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 6.1%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 4.9 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 Modoc 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.