Buena Vista city area

Population and density of Buena Vista city

The Census Bureau estimates that 6,672 people lived in Buena Vista city on July 1, 2025. That ranks #2,760 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #123 of 133 in Virginia. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 6,633, the population has grown by 39 (+0.6%), compared with +2.9% for Virginia as a whole.

With 6.4 square miles of land, that is 1,036 people per square mile (400 per km²), placing Buena Vista city #180 nationally for density and #34 in Virginia. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Virginia median is 109. Put another way, there are about 0.618 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 Buena Vista city

Every resident of Buena Vista city lives within Buena Vista city. The city and the county equivalent cover the same territory, 6.438 square miles of land in the 2026 place Gazetteer, so there are no separate towns or unincorporated areas to list.

Metropolitan area

Buena Vista city 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

1 ZIP Code Tabulation Area has land in Buena Vista city; 0 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

24416

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 Buena Vista city

Buena Vista city shares a land border with 1 county equivalent. Rockbridge County has 92.7 times its land area.

How big is Buena Vista city compared with U.S. states?

Buena Vista city has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 161 times as much. Virginia’s county land could hold about 6,133 areas the size of Buena Vista city.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 2.54 miles (4.1 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 Buena Vista city?

Buena Vista city has more land than 6 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 Buena Vista city at #3,217 nationally by total area, 1 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 1.3%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 0.1 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 Buena Vista city 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.