Brewster County area

Population and density of Brewster County

The Census Bureau estimates that 9,458 people lived in Brewster County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #2,524 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #168 of 254 in Texas. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 9,544, the population has declined by 86 (−0.9%), compared with +8.8% for Texas as a whole.

With 6,183.8 square miles of land, that is 1.5 people per square mile (0.59 per km²), placing Brewster County #3,102 nationally for density and #232 in Texas. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Texas median is 22. Put another way, there are about 418 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 Brewster County

1 incorporated place lies at least partly in Brewster County. Together they are home to 5,989 people (63.3%); the other 3,469 (36.7%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Alpine city, with 5,989 residents in the county.

Metropolitan area

Brewster 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

5 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Brewster County, and each lies mostly inside the county.

7983079832798347984279852

ZIP Code Tabulation Areas are the Census Bureau’s approximations of USPS ZIP Code service areas, from the 2020 Census relationship files. Post-office-box and single-address ZIP Codes have no tabulation area.

Counties bordering Brewster County

Brewster County shares a land border with 4 county equivalents. It has more land than every one of them. The largest neighbor is Pecos County (4,763.8 mi²) and the smallest is Jeff Davis County (2,264.6 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Brewster County forms a block of 19,425.4 mi² of land, of which it holds 31.8%.

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

Brewster County has more land than 3 of the 50 states. It is about 1.3 times the land area of Connecticut (4,842.5 mi²), while Hawaii, the next larger state, has 1 times as much land (6,422.6 mi²). Texas’s county land could hold about 42 areas the size of Brewster County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 78.6 miles (126.6 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 Brewster County?

Brewster County has more land than 3,165 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 Brewster County at #61 nationally by total area, 4 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 0.1%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 1 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 Brewster 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.