Geary County area

Population and density of Geary County

The Census Bureau estimates that 36,338 people lived in Geary County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #1,318 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #13 of 105 in Kansas. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 36,738, the population has declined by 400 (−1.1%), compared with +1.3% for Kansas as a whole.

With 384.7 square miles of land, that is 94 people per square mile (36 per km²), placing Geary County #1,036 nationally for density and #8 in Kansas. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Kansas median is 8.1. Put another way, there are about 6.8 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 Geary County

3 incorporated places lie at least partly in Geary County. Together they are home to 24,672 people (67.9%); the other 11,666 (32.1%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Junction City city, with 22,583 residents in the county.

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

Metropolitan area

Geary County is an outlying county of the Manhattan, KS Metropolitan Statistical Area. Its 3 county equivalents have 136,122 residents on 1,835 square miles of land; Geary County accounts for 21% of the land and 26.7% of the residents. By combined land it ranks #171 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #311 by population.

ZIP codes

8 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Geary County; 2 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

6644166442665026651466834668496687267487

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 Geary County

Geary County shares a land border with 5 county equivalents. Each of them has more land than Geary County. The largest neighbor is Dickinson County (847.1 mi²) and the smallest is Riley County (609.7 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Geary County forms a block of 3,976.4 mi² of land, of which it holds 9.7%.

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

Geary County has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 2.7 times as much. Kansas’s county land could hold about 213 areas the size of Geary County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 19.6 miles (31.6 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 Geary County?

Geary County has more land than 635 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 Geary County at #2,578 nationally by total area, 9 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 4.9%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 3.8 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 Geary 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.