Powell County area

Population and density of Powell County

The Census Bureau estimates that 7,157 people lived in Powell County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #2,721 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #30 of 56 in Montana. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 6,943, the population has grown by 214 (+3.1%), compared with +5.6% for Montana as a whole.

With 2,326 square miles of land, that is 3.1 people per square mile (1.2 per km²), placing Powell County #2,975 nationally for density and #26 in Montana. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Montana median is 2.8. Put another way, there are about 208 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 Powell County

1 incorporated place lies at least partly in Powell County. Together they are home to 3,025 people (42.3%); the other 4,132 (57.7%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Deer Lodge city, with 3,025 residents in the county.

Metropolitan area

Powell 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

8 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Powell County; 7 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

5971359722597285973159733598435985459868

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 Powell County

Powell County shares a land border with 6 county equivalents. It has more land than 3 of them. The largest neighbor is Flathead County (5,087.3 mi²) and the smallest is Deer Lodge County (736.7 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Powell County forms a block of 17,585.6 mi² of land, of which it holds 13.2%.

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

Powell County has more land than 2 of the 50 states. It is about 1.2 times the land area of Delaware (1,948.6 mi²), while Connecticut, the next larger state, has 2.1 times as much land (4,842.5 mi²). Montana’s county land could hold about 63 areas the size of Powell County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 48.2 miles (77.6 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 Powell County?

Powell County has more land than 2,983 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 Powell County at #264 nationally by total area, 25 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 0.3%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 0.9 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 Powell 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.