St. Charles Parish area

Population and density of St. Charles Parish

The Census Bureau estimates that 50,586 people lived in St. Charles Parish on July 1, 2025. That ranks #1,018 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #21 of 64 in Louisiana. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 52,547, the population has declined by 1,961 (−3.7%), compared with −0.9% for Louisiana as a whole.

With 277.7 square miles of land, that is 182 people per square mile (70 per km²), placing St. Charles Parish #677 nationally for density and #12 in Louisiana. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Louisiana median is 48. Put another way, there are about 3.5 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. Charles Parish

St. Charles Parish has no incorporated cities, towns or villages. All 50,586 of its residents live in unincorporated communities, which the Census Bureau describes as census-designated places rather than municipalities.

Metropolitan area

St. Charles 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. Charles Parish accounts for 11.8% of the land and 5.2% 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

10 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in St. Charles Parish; 9 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

70030700317003970047700577006870070700797008070087

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. Charles Parish

St. Charles Parish shares a land border with 3 county equivalents. It has more land than 1 of them. The largest neighbor is Lafourche Parish (1,069.7 mi²) and the smallest is St. John the Baptist Parish (214.5 mi²). Together with its neighbors, St. Charles Parish forms a block of 1,862.8 mi² of land, of which it holds 14.9%.

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

St. Charles Parish has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 3.7 times as much. Louisiana’s county land could hold about 156 areas the size of St. Charles Parish.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 16.7 miles (26.8 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. Charles Parish?

St. Charles Parish has more land than 369 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. Charles Parish at #2,616 nationally by total area, 237 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 30%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 28.9 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 St. Charles 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.