Tyrrell County area

Population and density of Tyrrell County

The Census Bureau estimates that 3,537 people lived in Tyrrell County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #2,996 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #100 of 100 in North Carolina. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 3,245, the population has grown by 292 (+9%), compared with +7.2% for North Carolina as a whole.

With 390.8 square miles of land, that is 9.1 people per square mile (3.5 per km²), placing Tyrrell County #2,678 nationally for density and #99 in North Carolina. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the North Carolina median is 116. Put another way, there are about 71 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 Tyrrell County

1 incorporated place lies at least partly in Tyrrell County. Together they are home to 613 people (17.3%); the other 2,924 (82.7%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Columbia town, with 613 residents in the county.

Metropolitan area

Tyrrell 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

3 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Tyrrell County; 1 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

278262792527928

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 Tyrrell County

Tyrrell County shares a land border with 2 county equivalents. It has more land than 1 of them. The largest neighbor is Hyde County (612.3 mi²) and the smallest is Washington County (346.5 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Tyrrell County forms a block of 1,349.6 mi² of land, of which it holds 29%.

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

Tyrrell 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. North Carolina’s county land could hold about 124 areas the size of Tyrrell County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 19.8 miles (31.8 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 Tyrrell County?

Tyrrell County has more land than 650 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 Tyrrell County at #1,752 nationally by total area, 820 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 34.6%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 33.4 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 Tyrrell 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.