Hartley County area

Population and density of Hartley County

The Census Bureau estimates that 4,904 people lived in Hartley County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #2,895 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #199 of 254 in Texas. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 5,363, the population has declined by 459 (−8.6%), compared with +8.8% for Texas as a whole.

With 1,462 square miles of land, that is 3.4 people per square mile (1.3 per km²), placing Hartley County #2,954 nationally for density and #215 in Texas. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Texas median is 22. Put another way, there are about 191 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 Hartley County

2 incorporated places lie at least partly in Hartley County. Together they are home to 2,859 people (58.3%); the other 2,045 (41.7%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Dalhart city, with 2,607 residents in the county (the city extends into 1 other county). The county seat, Channing city, has 252 residents.

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

Metropolitan area

Hartley 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

4 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Hartley County; 2 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

79018790227902979044

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 Hartley County

Hartley County shares a land border with 5 county equivalents, including 2 in New Mexico. It has more land than 1 of them. The largest neighbor is Union County (3,825.1 mi²) and the smallest is Moore County (899.7 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Hartley County forms a block of 12,064.5 mi² of land, of which it holds 12.1%.

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

Hartley County has more land than 1 of the 50 states. It is about 1.4 times the land area of Rhode Island (1,033.9 mi²), while Delaware, the next larger state, has 1.3 times as much land (1,948.6 mi²). Texas’s county land could hold about 179 areas the size of Hartley County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 38.2 miles (61.5 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 Hartley County?

Hartley County has more land than 2,813 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 Hartley County at #464 nationally by total area, 55 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% — 1.1 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 Hartley 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.