This Tiny North Dakota County Is the Fastest Growing in America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 6, 5:24AM EST · Published Apr 19, 8:41AM EDT

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This Tiny North Dakota County Is the Fastest Growing in America — © chamey / Getty Images

There are 3,142 counties in America. Among these, only one grew over 50%, according to a recent Census survey. It is a small county in North Dakota with only about 35,000 residents.

The new Census report, which covers city and county growth from the 2010 Census dated April 1, 2010, until July 1, 2018, is titled “New Census Bureau Estimates Show Counties in South and West Lead Nation in Population Growth.” Leading the list is Williams County, North Dakota, which grew 57.8% to 35,350. To be on the top 10 list in terms of growth, a county had to grow over 34% and had to have a population over 20,000. Interestingly, no county in North Dakota is among the 25 best counties in America to live in.

Four of the top 10 counties with the most rapid growth were in Texas. Hays County ranked second on the list, up 41.7% to 222,631. Comal County was sixth, up 36.8% to 148,373. Kendall County ranked seventh, up 36.0% to 45,641. Fort Bend County came in 10th, up 34.7% to 787,858. Two counties among the top 10 were in Florida. Sumter County ranked fourth on the overall list, up 37.8% to 128,754, while Osceola County ranked fifth and was up 37% to 367,990. The balance of the top 10: Wasatch County, Utah, ranked third, up 41.3% to 33,240; Dallas County, Iowa, eighth, up 36.4% to 90,180; and Forsyth County, Georgia, ranked ninth and grew by 34.8% to 236,612.

The report also said that Williams County was the fast growing in the county by another measure. This was population growth between July 1, 2017, and July 1, 2018. Its population for the one-year period was up 5.9%. Census researchers commented: “Among counties with a population of 20,000 or more, Williams County, N.D., was the fastest-growing county by percentage, increasing by 5.9 percent between 2017 and 2018 (from 33,395 to 35,350). The rapid growth Williams County, N.D., experienced was due mainly to net domestic migration (1,471) in 2018. The county also grew between 2017 and 2018 by natural increase (427) and international migration (52).”

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The study also ranked America’s 390 largest metro areas. The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area added 131,767 people between July 1, 2017, and July 1, 2018. No other American city came close. The Dallas suburb of Highland Park also was recently listed as one of America’s 50 best cities to live in.

The total population of the Dallas metro area as of mid-2018 was 7,407,944, which ranked it fourth in population among all American cities. The three ahead of it were the New York-Newark-Jersey City metro with 19,979,477 people, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim with 13,291,486 and Chicago-Naperville-Elgin with 9,498,716. None of these three were on the Census list of the top 10 metros that added the most people.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.