Shawnee County area

Population and density of Shawnee County

The Census Bureau estimates that 178,607 people lived in Shawnee County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #392 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #3 of 105 in Kansas. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 178,907, the population has declined by 300 (−0.2%), compared with +1.3% for Kansas as a whole.

With 544 square miles of land, that is 328 people per square mile (127 per km²), placing Shawnee County #473 nationally for density and #4 in Kansas. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Kansas median is 8.1. Put another way, there are about 1.9 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 Shawnee County

5 incorporated places lie at least partly in Shawnee County. Together they are home to 129,534 people (72.5%); the other 49,073 (27.5%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Topeka city, with 125,795 residents in the county.

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

Metropolitan area

Shawnee County is a central county of the Topeka, KS Metropolitan Statistical Area. Its 5 county equivalents have 233,052 residents on 3,232.7 square miles of land; Shawnee County accounts for 16.8% of the land and 76.6% of the residents. By combined land it ranks #94 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #209 by population.

ZIP codes

29 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Shawnee County; 24 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

6605066402664096643166512665246653366536665396654266546666036660466605666066660766608666096661066611666126661466615666166661766618666196662166622

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 Shawnee County

Shawnee County shares a land border with 6 county equivalents. It has more land than 2 of them. The largest neighbor is Pottawatomie County (840.7 mi²) and the smallest is Douglas County (455.8 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Shawnee County forms a block of 4,529.2 mi² of land, of which it holds 12%.

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

Shawnee 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. Kansas’s county land could hold about 150 areas the size of Shawnee County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 23.3 miles (37.5 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 Shawnee County?

Shawnee County has more land than 1,305 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 Shawnee County at #1,989 nationally by total area, 72 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 2.1%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 0.9 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 Shawnee 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.