Spencer County area

Population and density of Spencer County

The Census Bureau estimates that 20,998 people lived in Spencer County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #1,831 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #55 of 120 in Kentucky. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 19,418, the population has grown by 1,580 (+8.1%), compared with +2.2% for Kentucky as a whole.

With 186.7 square miles of land, that is 112 people per square mile (43 per km²), placing Spencer County #918 nationally for density and #25 in Kentucky. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Kentucky median is 59. Put another way, there are about 5.7 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 Spencer County

1 incorporated place lies at least partly in Spencer County. Together they are home to 1,333 people (6.3%); the other 19,665 (93.7%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Taylorsville city, with 1,333 residents in the county.

Metropolitan area

Spencer County is an outlying county of the Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN Metropolitan Statistical Area. Its 12 county equivalents have 1,402,509 residents on 3,960.8 square miles of land; Spencer County accounts for 4.7% of the land and 1.5% of the residents. By combined land it ranks #74 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #44 by population. It belongs to the Louisville/Jefferson County--Elizabethtown, KY-IN Combined Statistical Area.

ZIP codes

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

4000840013400234004640047400654007140076

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 Spencer County

Spencer County shares a land border with 5 county equivalents. Each of them has more land than Spencer County. The largest neighbor is Nelson County (418.7 mi²) and the smallest is Anderson County (202.3 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Spencer County forms a block of 1,865.3 mi² of land, of which it holds 10%.

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

Spencer County has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 5.5 times as much. Kentucky’s county land could hold about 212 areas the size of Spencer County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 13.7 miles (22 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 Spencer County?

Spencer County has more land than 204 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 Spencer County at #3,039 nationally by total area, 21 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 2.6%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 1.4 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 Spencer 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.