Hickory County area

Population and density of Hickory County

The Census Bureau estimates that 9,044 people lived in Hickory County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #2,560 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #91 of 115 in Missouri. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 8,279, the population has grown by 765 (+9.2%), compared with +1.9% for Missouri as a whole.

With 398.8 square miles of land, that is 23 people per square mile (8.8 per km²), placing Hickory County #2,218 nationally for density and #71 in Missouri. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Missouri median is 31. Put another way, there are about 28 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 Hickory County

5 incorporated places lie at least partly in Hickory County. Together they are home to 1,693 people (18.7%); the other 7,351 (81.3%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Hermitage city, with 658 residents in the county.

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

Metropolitan area

Hickory 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

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

65326653556563465650656686567465724657276573265735657676577465779

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 Hickory County

Hickory County shares a land border with 5 county equivalents. Each of them has more land than Hickory County. The largest neighbor is Benton County (704 mi²) and the smallest is Dallas County (541 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Hickory County forms a block of 3,610.1 mi² of land, of which it holds 11%.

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

Hickory County has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 2.6 times as much. Missouri’s county land could hold about 172 areas the size of Hickory County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 20 miles (32.1 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 Hickory County?

Hickory County has more land than 690 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 Hickory County at #2,532 nationally by total area, the same position as its land rank. Changing the area definition does not change its position in this release.

Its water share is 3.1%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 2 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 Hickory 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.