Runnels County area

Population and density of Runnels County

The Census Bureau estimates that 9,693 people lived in Runnels County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #2,507 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #165 of 254 in Texas. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 9,896, the population has declined by 203 (−2.1%), compared with +8.8% for Texas as a whole.

With 1,051.1 square miles of land, that is 9.2 people per square mile (3.6 per km²), placing Runnels County #2,669 nationally for density and #174 in Texas. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Texas median is 22. Put another way, there are about 69 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 Runnels County

3 incorporated places lie at least partly in Runnels County. Together they are home to 6,693 people (69%); the other 3,000 (31%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Ballinger city, with 3,499 residents in the county.

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

Metropolitan area

Runnels 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

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

7682176861768657687576882769337951979530795387956679567

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 Runnels County

Runnels County shares a land border with 6 county equivalents. It has more land than 4 of them. The largest neighbor is Tom Green County (1,522.3 mi²) and the smallest is Coke County (911.6 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Runnels County forms a block of 7,559.3 mi² of land, of which it holds 13.9%.

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

Runnels County has more land than 1 of the 50 states. It is about 1 times the land area of Rhode Island (1,033.9 mi²), while Delaware, the next larger state, has 1.9 times as much land (1,948.6 mi²). Texas’s county land could hold about 249 areas the size of Runnels County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 32.4 miles (52.2 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 Runnels County?

Runnels County has more land than 2,599 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 Runnels County at #712 nationally by total area, 89 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 0.6%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 0.6 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 Runnels 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.