Vilas County area

Population and density of Vilas County

The Census Bureau estimates that 23,761 people lived in Vilas County on July 1, 2025. That ranks #1,708 of 3,222 county equivalents nationally and #49 of 72 in Wisconsin. Since the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 23,051, the population has grown by 710 (+3.1%), compared with +1.3% for Wisconsin as a whole.

With 857.7 square miles of land, that is 28 people per square mile (11 per km²), placing Vilas County #2,074 nationally for density and #56 in Wisconsin. The median county equivalent has 47 people per square mile; the Wisconsin median is 51. Put another way, there are about 23 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 Vilas County

Vilas County is divided into 15 cities and towns. In Wisconsin, county subdivisions are local governments, and together they cover all of the county’s land and residents.

The most populous is Lac du Flambeau town, with 3,659 residents (15.4% of the county), and it is also the largest by land at 99.2 mi². The county seat, Eagle River city, has 1,715 residents. Among those with at least 1,000 residents in 2020, Eagle River city grew fastest since then (+5%).

Population: U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 subcounty estimates, counting only the part of each subdivision inside Vilas County. Land: 2026 Census Gazetteer. How communities are listed.

Metropolitan area

Vilas 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

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

54512545195452154538545405454554548545545455754558545605456154568

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 Vilas County

Vilas County shares a land border with 6 county equivalents, including 2 in Michigan. It has more land than 1 of them. The largest neighbor is Price County (1,254.1 mi²) and the smallest is Iron County (758.2 mi²). Together with its neighbors, Vilas County forms a block of 7,266.4 mi² of land, of which it holds 11.8%.

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

Vilas County has less land than any of the 50 states. Rhode Island, the smallest state by land area, has 1,033.9 mi², about 1.2 times as much. Wisconsin’s county land could hold about 63 areas the size of Vilas County.

Another way to picture it: the same land area would fill a square about 29.3 miles (47.1 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 Vilas County?

Vilas County has more land than 2,253 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 Vilas County at #752 nationally by total area, 217 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 15.7%, compared with a national county-equivalent median of 1.2% — 14.6 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 Vilas 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.