Dawes County area

Population and density of Dawes County

The Census Bureau estimates that 7,858 people lived in Dawes County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #2,660 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #37 of 93 in Nebraska. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 8,198, the population has declined by 340 (−4.1%), compared with +2.9% for Nebraska as a whole.

With 1,396.4 square miles of land, that is 5.6 people per square mile (2.2 per km²), placing Dawes County #2,818 nationally for density and #58 in Nebraska. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Nebraska median is 8. Put another way, there are about 114 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 Dawes County

3 incorporated places lie at least partly in Dawes County. Together they are home to 5,812 people (74%); the other 2,046 (26%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Chadron city, with 4,975 residents in the county.

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

Metropolitan area

Dawes 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

6 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Dawes County; 3 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

693376933969347693486935469367

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 Dawes County

Dawes County shares a land border with 5 county equivalents, including 2 in South Dakota. It has more land than 1 of them. The largest neighbor is Sheridan County (2,440.2 mi²) and the smallest is Box Butte County (1,075.2 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Dawes County forms a block of 10,812.1 mi² of land, of which it holds 12.9%.

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

Dawes County has more land than 1 of the 50 states. It is about 1.4 times the land area of Rhode Island (1,033.9 mi²), while Delaware, the next larger state, has 1.4 times as much land (1,948.6 mi²). Nebraska’s county land could hold about 55 areas the size of Dawes County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 37.4 miles (60.1 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 Dawes County?

Dawes County has more land than 2,790 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 Dawes County at #491 nationally by total area, 59 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% — 0.8 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 Dawes 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.