Wise County area

Population and density of Wise County

The Census Bureau estimates that 83,778 people lived in Wise County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #708 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #51 of 254 in Texas. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 68,617, the population has grown by 15,161 (+22.1%), compared with +8.8% for Texas as a whole.

With 904.4 square miles of land, that is 93 people per square mile (36 per km²), placing Wise County #1,047 nationally for density and #54 in Texas. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Texas median is 22. Put another way, there are about 6.9 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 Wise County

14 incorporated places lie at least partly in Wise County. Together they are home to 31,272 people (37.3%); the other 52,506 (62.7%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Decatur city, with 9,029 residents in the county. By land, Fort Worth city is the largest at 354.4 mi² across all its counties. Among places with at least 1,000 residents in 2020, Boyd town grew fastest since then (+79.5%).

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

Metropolitan area

Wise County is an outlying county of the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area, in the Fort Worth-Arlington-Grapevine, TX metropolitan division. Its 11 county equivalents have 8,477,157 residents on 8,675.6 square miles of land; Wise County accounts for 10.4% of the land and 1% 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

18 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Wise County; 9 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

760207602376052760717607376078760827622576234762477624976259762677627076426764317645876487

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 Wise County

Wise County shares a land border with 6 county equivalents. It has more land than 4 of them. The largest neighbor is Montague County (930.9 mi²) and the smallest is Tarrant County (865.4 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Wise County forms a block of 6,268.4 mi² of land, of which it holds 14.4%.

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

Wise 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 289 areas the size of Wise County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 30.1 miles (48.4 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 Wise County?

Wise County has more land than 2,390 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 Wise County at #895 nationally by total area, 63 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 2%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 0.8 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 Wise 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.