Rankings · Place

Highest population density by state

People per square mile of land.

This measure has no better end. The order describes the states, it does not rank them — see the other direction.

Population divided by land area. The single clearest measure of how a place feels day to day — more so than population, which tells you how many people share a boundary without saying how far apart they are. Ranges across four orders of magnitude, from under one person per square mile across the Alaskan interior and the Great Plains to tens of thousands in the dense boroughs.

  1. 1District of Columbia11169.0
  2. 2New Jersey1271.0
  3. 3Rhode Island1067.0
  4. 4Massachusetts903.0
  5. 5Connecticut749.0
  6. 6Maryland639.0
  7. 7Delaware524.0
  8. 8New York421.0
  9. 9Florida418.0
  10. 10Pennsylvania291.0
  11. 11Ohio289.0
  12. 12California252.0
  13. 13Illinois229.0
  14. 14Hawaii225.0
  15. 15North Carolina221.0
  16. 16Virginia221.0
  17. 17Indiana191.0
  18. 18Georgia190.0
  19. 19Michigan178.0
  20. 20South Carolina176.0
  21. 21Tennessee171.0
  22. 22New Hampshire156.0
  23. 23Washington118.0
  24. 24Texas116.0
  25. 25Kentucky115.0
  26. 26Wisconsin109.0
  27. 27Louisiana107.0
  28. 28Alabama100.0
  29. 29Missouri90.1
  30. 30West Virginia74.0
  31. 31Minnesota72.1
  32. 32Vermont70.2
  33. 33Arizona64.9
  34. 34Mississippi62.8
  35. 35Arkansas58.7
  36. 36Oklahoma58.7
  37. 37Iowa57.5
  38. 38Colorado56.6
  39. 39Maine45.0
  40. 40Oregon44.3
  41. 41Utah41.1
  42. 42Kansas36.0
  43. 43Nevada29.0
  44. 44Nebraska25.8
  45. 45Idaho23.4
  46. 46New Mexico17.5
  47. 47South Dakota12.0
  48. 48North Dakota11.4
  49. 49Montana7.7
  50. 50Wyoming6.0
  51. 51Alaska1.3
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<iframe src="https://movermath.com/embed/population-density" width="100%" height="420" style="border:0" loading="lazy" title="People per square mile of land by state"></iframe>

Source: U.S. Census Bureau. · How this is built