Clay County area

Population and density of Clay County

The Census Bureau estimates that 10,764 people lived in Clay County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #2,432 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #161 of 254 in Texas. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 10,217, the population has grown by 547 (+5.4%), compared with +8.8% for Texas as a whole.

With 1,088.8 square miles of land, that is 9.9 people per square mile (3.8 per km²), placing Clay County #2,648 nationally for density and #170 in Texas. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Texas median is 22. Put another way, there are about 65 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 Clay County

8 incorporated places lie at least partly in Clay County. Together they are home to 5,267 people (48.9%); the other 5,497 (51.1%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Henrietta city, with 3,258 residents in the county. By land, Wichita Falls city is the largest at 72.3 mi² across all its counties.

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

Metropolitan area

Clay County is an outlying county of the Wichita Falls, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area. Its 3 county equivalents have 149,448 residents on 2,619.6 square miles of land; Clay County accounts for 41.6% of the land and 7.2% of the residents. By combined land it ranks #123 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #296 by population.

ZIP codes

9 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Clay County; 5 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

762287623076261763057631076357763657637776389

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 Clay County

Clay County shares a land border with 6 county equivalents, including 2 in Oklahoma. It has more land than every one of them. The largest neighbor is Montague County (930.9 mi²) and the smallest is Wichita County (627.6 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Clay County forms a block of 5,853.1 mi² of land, of which it holds 18.6%.

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

Clay County has more land than 1 of the 50 states. It is about 1.1 times the land area of Rhode Island (1,033.9 mi²), while Delaware, the next larger state, has 1.8 times as much land (1,948.6 mi²). Texas’s county land could hold about 240 areas the size of Clay County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 33 miles (53.1 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 Clay County?

Clay County has more land than 2,636 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 Clay County at #656 nationally by total area, 70 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 2.5%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 1.3 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 Clay 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.