Cascade County area

Population and density of Cascade County

The Census Bureau estimates that 85,029 people lived in Cascade County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #701 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #5 of 56 in Montana. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 84,417, the population has grown by 612 (+0.7%), compared with +5.6% for Montana as a whole.

With 2,698.2 square miles of land, that is 32 people per square mile (12 per km²), placing Cascade County #1,960 nationally for density and #5 in Montana. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Montana median is 2.8. Put another way, there are about 20 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 Cascade County

4 incorporated places lie at least partly in Cascade County. Together they are home to 61,349 people (72.2%); the other 23,680 (27.8%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Great Falls city, with 60,208 residents in the county.

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

Metropolitan area

Cascade County is a central county of the Great Falls, MT Metropolitan Statistical Area. Cascade County is the area’s only county equivalent, so the metro area has the same 2,698.2 square miles of land. By combined land it ranks #116 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #381 by population.

ZIP codes

18 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Cascade County; 15 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

594015940459405594125941459421594365944059443594635946559468594725947759480594835948559487

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 Cascade County

Cascade County shares a land border with 5 county equivalents. It has more land than 3 of them. The largest neighbor is Chouteau County (3,972.5 mi²) and the smallest is Judith Basin County (1,869.7 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Cascade County forms a block of 16,662.3 mi² of land, of which it holds 16.2%.

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

Cascade County has more land than 2 of the 50 states. It is about 1.4 times the land area of Delaware (1,948.6 mi²), while Connecticut, the next larger state, has 1.8 times as much land (4,842.5 mi²). Montana’s county land could hold about 54 areas the size of Cascade County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 51.9 miles (83.6 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 Cascade County?

Cascade County has more land than 3,030 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 Cascade County at #206 nationally by total area, 14 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 0.5%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 0.7 percentage points lower. 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 Cascade 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.