Essex County area

Population and density of Essex County

The Census Bureau estimates that 10,654 people lived in Essex County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #2,438 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #115 of 133 in Virginia. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 10,600, the population has grown by 54 (+0.5%), compared with +2.9% for Virginia as a whole.

With 257.4 square miles of land, that is 41 people per square mile (16 per km²), placing Essex County #1,723 nationally for density and #107 in Virginia. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Virginia median is 109. Put another way, there are about 15 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 Essex County

1 incorporated place lies at least partly in Essex County. Together they are home to 2,193 people (20.6%); the other 8,461 (79.4%) live outside any incorporated place, in unincorporated communities and rural areas.

The largest is Tappahannock town, with 2,193 residents in the county.

Metropolitan area

Essex 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

9 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas have land in Essex County; 7 of them have most of their land inside the county, and the others mainly cover neighboring areas.

224362243722438224542247622504225092256023148

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 Essex County

Essex County shares a land border with 6 county equivalents. It has more land than 4 of them. The largest neighbor is Caroline County (527.4 mi²) and the smallest is Middlesex County (130.3 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Essex County forms a block of 1,830.6 mi² of land, of which it holds 14.1%.

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

Essex County has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 4 times as much. Virginia’s county land could hold about 153 areas the size of Essex County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 16 miles (25.8 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 Essex County?

Essex County has more land than 330 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 Essex County at #2,871 nationally by total area, 21 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 10.1%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 8.9 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 Essex 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.