Ector County area

Population and density of Ector County

The Census Bureau estimates that 173,801 people lived in Ector County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #408 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #32 of 254 in Texas. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 165,177, the population has grown by 8,624 (+5.2%), compared with +8.8% for Texas as a whole.

With 897.9 square miles of land, that is 194 people per square mile (75 per km²), placing Ector County #650 nationally for density and #35 in Texas. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Texas median is 22. Put another way, there are about 3.3 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 Ector County

2 incorporated places lie at least partly in Ector County. Together they are home to 118,625 people (68.3%); the other 55,176 (31.7%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Odessa city, with 118,390 residents in the county (the city extends into 1 other county).

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

Metropolitan area

Ector County is a central county of the Odessa, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area. Ector County is the area’s only county equivalent, so the metro area has the same 897.9 square miles of land. By combined land it ranks #294 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #261 by population. It belongs to the Midland-Odessa-Andrews, TX Combined Statistical Area.

ZIP codes

11 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Ector County; 10 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

7974179758797597976179762797637976479765797667976979776

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 Ector County

Ector County shares a land border with 6 county equivalents. It has more land than 3 of them. The largest neighbor is Andrews County (1,500.7 mi²) and the smallest is Crane County (785.1 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Ector County forms a block of 7,002.2 mi² of land, of which it holds 12.8%.

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

Ector County has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 1.2 times as much. Texas’s county land could hold about 291 areas the size of Ector County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 30 miles (48.2 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 Ector County?

Ector County has more land than 2,354 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 Ector County at #962 nationally by total area, 94 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 0.4%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 0.7 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 Ector 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.