Aitkin County area

Population and density of Aitkin County

The Census Bureau estimates that 16,252 people lived in Aitkin County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #2,084 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #53 of 87 in Minnesota. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 15,689, the population has grown by 563 (+3.6%), compared with +2.2% for Minnesota as a whole.

With 1,821.3 square miles of land, that is 8.9 people per square mile (3.4 per km²), placing Aitkin County #2,683 nationally for density and #76 in Minnesota. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Minnesota median is 27. Put another way, there are about 72 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 Aitkin County

Aitkin County is divided into 50 municipalities and townships. In Minnesota, county subdivisions are local governments, and together they cover all of the county’s land and residents.

The most populous is Aitkin city, with 2,155 residents (13.3% of the county). The largest by land is Northwest Aitkin UT, at 287.9 mi², or 15.8% of the county’s land. Among those with at least 1,000 residents in 2020, Shamrock township grew fastest since then (+4.6%).

Population: U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 subcounty estimates, counting only the part of each subdivision inside Aitkin County. Land: 2026 Census Gazetteer. How communities are listed.

Metropolitan area

Aitkin County is not part of any metropolitan or micropolitan statistical area in the Office of Management and Budget’s July 2023 delineation; 1,306 other county equivalents are also outside one. These areas are built around an urban core of at least 10,000 people plus the counties tied to it by commuting, so counties outside them are generally rural.

ZIP codes

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

557355574855752557605578355785557875579856342563505643156469

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 Aitkin County

Aitkin County shares a land border with 8 county equivalents. It has more land than 5 of them. The largest neighbor is St. Louis County (6,248.1 mi²) and the smallest is Kanabec County (521.6 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Aitkin County forms a block of 17,123.3 mi² of land, of which it holds 10.6%.

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

Aitkin County has more land than 1 of the 50 states. It is about 1.8 times the land area of Rhode Island (1,033.9 mi²), while Delaware, the next larger state, has 1.1 times as much land (1,948.6 mi²). Minnesota’s county land could hold about 44 areas the size of Aitkin County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 42.7 miles (68.7 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 Aitkin County?

Aitkin County has more land than 2,900 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 Aitkin County at #320 nationally by total area, 2 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 8.7%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 7.5 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 Aitkin 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.