Discovering The True Size Of Stearns County In Central Minnesota

Since I moved to Minnesota in September 2023, I’ve been all around Central Minnesota and a little beyond. My travels have been mostly for work, but I’ve gotten to see a lot of the towns and cities around the area. 

There’s one thing I’ve learned about Stearns County, which is the county I live in now, it’s big. Much bigger than I thought it was when I moved here. 

As I have gotten to know the state a little better, I recognize that certain areas are much bigger than others, but I felt confident that Stearns had to be one of the biggest counties in Minnesota in square miles. 

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It is; well sort of. 

According to information from usarank.com, they break down the land size of each county in the state, and Stearns is only the 14th biggest with 1,343 square miles. I was talking with some co-workers recently who guessed that the county would have ranked higher as well. 

Stearns is only slightly bigger than neighboring Morrison County which is ranked 17th with just over 1,125 square miles. Even though the population is vastly different between the two counties, nearly 152,000 for Stearns County and just over 33,000 for Morrison County.  Morrison County is the next biggest county in the Central Minnesota area.  

Wright County is closer in population size to Stearns County with over 127,000 people but is a much smaller land area at just over 660 square miles.  

I was taken aback a little bit to see how much bigger that the Stearns County land area was larger than Hennepin County, which is around 553 square miles, but has a population discrepancy that favored the smaller county with 1.18 million people in Hennepin County and not even 152,000 in Stearns.  

It’s no surprise that the six biggest land area counties are all up in the Northern most counties, and five of the six are in the Northeastern Corner of the state. They are in order by size: 

Saint Louis County 6,247 square miles 

Koochiching County 3,104 square miles 

Itasca County has just over 2,667 square miles 

Beltrami County is fourth biggest with almost 2,505 square miles  

Lake County with 2,109 square miles  

Cass County with 2021 square miles 

 Looking at these numbers more closely, it was really interesting to see the vast differences that our state contains. By the way, Minnesota is the 12th largest state in the United States at almost 87,000 square miles.