St. Bernard Parish area

Population and density of St. Bernard Parish

The Census Bureau estimates that 45,642 people lived in St. Bernard Parish on July 1, 2025. That ranks #1,100 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #24 of 64 in Louisiana. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 43,765, the population has grown by 1,877 (+4.3%), compared with −0.9% for Louisiana as a whole.

With 377.5 square miles of land, that is 121 people per square mile (47 per km²), placing St. Bernard Parish #872 nationally for density and #16 in Louisiana. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Louisiana median is 48. Put another way, there are about 5.3 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 St. Bernard Parish

St. Bernard Parish has no incorporated cities, towns or villages. All 45,642 of its residents live in unincorporated communities, which the Census Bureau describes as census-designated places rather than municipalities.

Metropolitan area

St. Bernard Parish is a central county of the New Orleans-Metairie, LA Metropolitan Statistical Area. Its 7 county equivalents have 970,849 residents on 2,358.6 square miles of land; St. Bernard Parish accounts for 16% of the land and 4.7% of the residents. By combined land it ranks #139 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #60 by population. It belongs to the New Orleans-Metairie-Slidell, LA-MS Combined Statistical Area.

ZIP codes

6 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in St. Bernard Parish; 5 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

700327004070043700757008570092

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 St. Bernard Parish

St. Bernard Parish shares a land border with 2 county equivalents. It has more land than 1 of them. The largest neighbor is Plaquemines Parish (780.6 mi²) and the smallest is Orleans Parish (169.6 mi²). Together with its neighbors, St. Bernard Parish forms a block of 1,327.7 mi² of land, of which it holds 28.4%.

How big is St. Bernard Parish compared with U.S. states?

St. Bernard Parish 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. Louisiana’s county land could hold about 114 areas the size of St. Bernard Parish.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 19.4 miles (31.3 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 St. Bernard Parish?

St. Bernard Parish has more land than 611 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 St. Bernard Parish at #291 nationally by total area, 2,320 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 82.5%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 81.3 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 St. Bernard Parish 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.