Matagorda County area

Population and density of Matagorda County

The Census Bureau estimates that 36,463 people lived in Matagorda County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #1,315 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #87 of 254 in Texas. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 36,254, the population has grown by 209 (+0.6%), compared with +8.8% for Texas as a whole.

With 1,093.1 square miles of land, that is 33 people per square mile (13 per km²), placing Matagorda County #1,907 nationally for density and #102 in Texas. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Texas median is 22. Put another way, there are about 19 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 Matagorda County

2 incorporated places lie at least partly in Matagorda County. Together they are home to 21,858 people (59.9%); the other 14,605 (40.1%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Bay City city, with 17,488 residents in the county.

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

Metropolitan area

Matagorda County is a central county of the Bay City, TX Micropolitan Statistical Area. Matagorda County is the area’s only county equivalent, so the micro area has the same 1,093.1 square miles of land. By combined land it ranks #158 of 542 micropolitan areas, and #377 by population. It belongs to the Houston-Pasadena, TX Combined Statistical Area.

ZIP codes

14 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Matagorda County; 12 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

7741477415774197742077428774407745677457774587746577468774807748277483

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 Matagorda County

Matagorda County shares a land border with 4 county equivalents. It has more land than 3 of them. The largest neighbor is Brazoria County (1,363.3 mi²) and the smallest is Calhoun County (506.9 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Matagorda County forms a block of 4,879 mi² of land, of which it holds 22.4%.

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

Matagorda 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 239 areas the size of Matagorda County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 33.1 miles (53.2 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 Matagorda County?

Matagorda County has more land than 2,637 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 Matagorda County at #417 nationally by total area, 168 places closer to the top than its land rank. The water assigned to this geography moves it ahead of some county equivalents with more land.

Its water share is 32.2%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 31 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 Matagorda 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.