Rankings · Place

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