Bandera County area

Population and density of Bandera County

The Census Bureau estimates that 22,876 people lived in Bandera County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #1,739 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #109 of 254 in Texas. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 20,836, the population has grown by 2,040 (+9.8%), compared with +8.8% for Texas as a whole.

With 791 square miles of land, that is 29 people per square mile (11 per km²), placing Bandera County #2,035 nationally for density and #111 in Texas. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Texas median is 22. Put another way, there are about 22 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 Bandera County

1 incorporated place lies at least partly in Bandera County. Together they are home to 891 people (3.9%); the other 21,985 (96.1%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Bandera city, with 891 residents in the county.

Metropolitan area

Bandera County is an outlying county of the San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area. Its 8 county equivalents have 2,813,140 residents on 7,313.3 square miles of land; Bandera County accounts for 10.8% of the land and 0.8% of the residents. By combined land it ranks #24 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #24 by population. It belongs to the San Antonio-New Braunfels-Kerrville, TX Combined Statistical Area.

ZIP codes

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

78003780237805578063788837888478885

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 Bandera County

Bandera County shares a land border with 6 county equivalents. It has more land than 2 of them. The largest neighbor is Uvalde County (1,551.9 mi²) and the smallest is Kendall County (662.5 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Bandera County forms a block of 7,373.7 mi² of land, of which it holds 10.7%.

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

Bandera County has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 1.3 times as much. Texas’s county land could hold about 330 areas the size of Bandera County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 28.1 miles (45.3 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 Bandera County?

Bandera County has more land than 2,133 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 Bandera County at #1,189 nationally by total area, 100 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 0.8%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 0.3 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 Bandera 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.