Plumas County area

Population and density of Plumas County

The Census Bureau estimates that 18,583 people lived in Plumas County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #1,966 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #51 of 58 in California. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 19,794, the population has declined by 1,211 (−6.1%), compared with −0.5% for California as a whole.

With 2,553.1 square miles of land, that is 7.3 people per square mile (2.8 per km²), placing Plumas County #2,750 nationally for density and #50 in California. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the California median is 112. Put another way, there are about 88 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 Plumas County

1 incorporated place lies at least partly in Plumas County. Together they are home to 2,024 people (10.9%); the other 16,559 (89.1%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Portola city, with 2,024 residents in the county.

Metropolitan area

Plumas 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

18 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Plumas County; 16 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

959159592395934959479595695971959819598395984960209610396105961069611896122961299613596137

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 Plumas County

Plumas County shares a land border with 6 county equivalents. It has more land than 3 of them. The largest neighbor is Lassen County (4,541.4 mi²) and the smallest is Yuba County (632 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Plumas County forms a block of 17,040.9 mi² of land, of which it holds 15%.

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

Plumas County has more land than 2 of the 50 states. It is about 1.3 times the land area of Delaware (1,948.6 mi²), while Connecticut, the next larger state, has 1.9 times as much land (4,842.5 mi²). California’s county land could hold about 61 areas the size of Plumas County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 50.5 miles (81.3 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 Plumas County?

Plumas County has more land than 3,007 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 Plumas County at #220 nationally by total area, 5 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 2.3%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 1.1 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 Plumas 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.