Ellis County area

Population and density of Ellis County

The Census Bureau estimates that 240,867 people lived in Ellis County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #305 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #25 of 254 in Texas. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 192,460, the population has grown by 48,407 (+25.2%), compared with +8.8% for Texas as a whole.

With 935.8 square miles of land, that is 257 people per square mile (99 per km²), placing Ellis County #562 nationally for density and #31 in Texas. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Texas median is 22. Put another way, there are about 2.5 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 Ellis County

20 incorporated places lie at least partly in Ellis County. Together they are home to 170,892 people (70.9%); the other 69,975 (29.1%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Waxahachie city, with 50,090 residents in the county. By land, Grand Prairie city is the largest at 79.4 mi² across all its counties. Among places with at least 1,000 residents in 2020, Ferris city grew fastest since then (+53.9%).

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

Metropolitan area

Ellis County is a central county of the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area, in the Dallas-Plano-Irving, TX metropolitan division. Its 11 county equivalents have 8,477,157 residents on 8,675.6 square miles of land; Ellis County accounts for 10.8% of the land and 2.8% of the residents. By combined land it ranks #11 of 393 metropolitan areas, and #4 by population. It belongs to the Dallas-Fort Worth, TX-OK Combined Statistical Area.

ZIP codes

20 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Ellis County; 13 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

7510175104751197512575146751527515475165751677604176050760637606476065760847662376626766417665176670

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 Ellis County

Ellis County shares a land border with 7 county equivalents. It has more land than 5 of them. The largest neighbor is Navarro County (1,009.7 mi²) and the smallest is Johnson County (725.1 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Ellis County forms a block of 7,022.5 mi² of land, of which it holds 13.3%.

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

Ellis County has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 1.1 times as much. Texas’s county land could hold about 279 areas the size of Ellis County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 30.6 miles (49.2 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 Ellis County?

Ellis County has more land than 2,459 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 Ellis County at #843 nationally by total area, 80 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 1.7%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 0.5 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 Ellis 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.