Franklin County area

Population and density of Franklin County

The Census Bureau estimates that 36,916 people lived in Franklin County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #1,299 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #36 of 102 in Illinois. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 37,801, the population has declined by 885 (−2.3%), compared with −0.8% for Illinois as a whole.

With 408.9 square miles of land, that is 90 people per square mile (35 per km²), placing Franklin County #1,070 nationally for density and #26 in Illinois. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Illinois median is 44. Put another way, there are about 7.1 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 Franklin County

16 incorporated places lie at least partly in Franklin County. Together they are home to 24,259 people (65.7%); the other 12,657 (34.3%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is West Frankfort city, with 7,105 residents in the county. By land, Benton city is the largest at 5.49 mi².

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

Metropolitan area

Franklin 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

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

62812628196282262825628366285662859628606286562874628836288462890628916289662897629326298362999

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 Franklin County

Franklin County shares a land border with 6 county equivalents. It has more land than 1 of them. The largest neighbor is Jackson County (583.6 mi²) and the smallest is Saline County (380 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Franklin County forms a block of 3,240.5 mi² of land, of which it holds 12.6%.

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

Franklin County has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 2.5 times as much. Illinois’s county land could hold about 136 areas the size of Franklin County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 20.2 miles (32.5 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 Franklin County?

Franklin County has more land than 752 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 Franklin County at #2,438 nationally by total area, 32 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 5.2%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 4.1 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 Franklin 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.