Meigs County area

Population and density of Meigs County

The Census Bureau estimates that 14,186 people lived in Meigs County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #2,220 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #81 of 95 in Tennessee. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 12,756, the population has grown by 1,430 (+11.2%), compared with +5.8% for Tennessee as a whole.

With 195.1 square miles of land, that is 73 people per square mile (28 per km²), placing Meigs County #1,230 nationally for density and #50 in Tennessee. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Tennessee median is 76. Put another way, there are about 8.8 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 Meigs County

1 incorporated place lies at least partly in Meigs County. Together they are home to 1,637 people (11.5%); the other 12,549 (88.5%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Decatur town, with 1,637 residents in the county.

Metropolitan area

Meigs County is an outlying county of the Athens, TN Micropolitan Statistical Area. Its 2 county equivalents have 71,590 residents on 625.3 square miles of land; Meigs County accounts for 31.2% of the land and 19.8% of the residents. By combined land it ranks #342 of 542 micropolitan areas, and #101 by population. It belongs to the Chattanooga-Cleveland-Dalton, TN-GA-AL Combined Statistical Area.

ZIP codes

6 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Meigs County; 2 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

373083732237336378263784637880

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 Meigs County

Meigs County shares a land border with 5 county equivalents. Each of them has more land than Meigs County. The largest neighbor is Hamilton County (542.2 mi²) and the smallest is Rhea County (315.5 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Meigs County forms a block of 2,172.4 mi² of land, of which it holds 9%.

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

Meigs County has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 5.3 times as much. Tennessee’s county land could hold about 211 areas the size of Meigs County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 14 miles (22.5 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 Meigs County?

Meigs County has more land than 216 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 Meigs County at #2,999 nationally by total area, 7 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 9.9%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 8.8 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 Meigs 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.