Rankings · Place

Highest water area by state

Share of the county that is water.

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

Lakes, rivers, reservoirs and the coastal water inside the county boundary, as a share of the county's whole area. Neutral rather than good: water is why people move to some counties and why others flood. Read it with care on the coast, where a county line reaches miles out to sea and produces a high figure with no lake in it — Michigan and Minnesota counties score high for water you can actually reach, while a barrier island county scores high for ocean. Census TIGERweb, the same boundaries the land area comes from.

  1. 1Hawaii42.0%
  2. 2Michigan41.0%
  3. 3Rhode Island33.0%
  4. 4Massachusetts26.0%
  5. 5Florida25.0%
  6. 6Delaware22.0%
  7. 7Maryland22.0%
  8. 8Louisiana17.0%
  9. 9Wisconsin17.0%
  10. 10New Jersey16.0%
  11. 11Alaska14.0%
  12. 12New York14.0%
  13. 13Connecticut13.0%
  14. 14Maine13.0%
  15. 15District of Columbia11.0%
  16. 16North Carolina9.7%
  17. 17Ohio8.9%
  18. 18Minnesota8.4%
  19. 19Virginia7.7%
  20. 20Washington6.8%
  21. 21South Carolina6.2%
  22. 22California4.8%
  23. 23Illinois4.2%
  24. 24New Hampshire4.2%
  25. 25Vermont4.2%
  26. 26Alabama3.4%
  27. 27Mississippi3.1%
  28. 28Georgia2.9%
  29. 29Pennsylvania2.9%
  30. 30Texas2.7%
  31. 31Utah2.7%
  32. 32North Dakota2.4%
  33. 33Oregon2.4%
  34. 34Arkansas2.3%
  35. 35Kentucky2.3%
  36. 36Tennessee2.1%
  37. 37Oklahoma1.9%
  38. 38South Dakota1.7%
  39. 39Indiana1.6%
  40. 40Missouri1.4%
  41. 41Idaho1.1%
  42. 42Montana1.0%
  43. 43West Virginia0.8%
  44. 44Iowa0.7%
  45. 45Nebraska0.7%
  46. 46Wyoming0.7%
  47. 47Kansas0.6%
  48. 48Nevada0.6%
  49. 49Colorado0.4%
  50. 50Arizona0.3%
  51. 51New Mexico0.2%
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Source: U.S. Census Bureau, TIGERweb. · How this is built