Columbus

Columbus is a county inside North Carolina (FIPS code 37047) that contains 13 USPS ZIP codes covering a combined population of 54,690 according to Census ACS 5-Year Estimates. Counties are the natural bridge between state-level summaries and ZIP-level detail — crime statistics, HUD Fair Market Rents, and childcare pricing are all published at the county level, while household income and housing values are published at the ZIP level. This page reconciles the two views so you can see which ZIPs drive the county totals.

The 13 ZIPs listed below are ordered by population and each links to the full ZIP detail page with Census demographics, housing, income, home-price history, and cross-agency inputs. The most populated ZIP in Columbus is 28472 covering Whiteville with 19,658 residents at 42 people per square mile. Population density across ZIPs in this county varies — use the density column to spot urban cores versus rural delivery areas. A single county can contain both a dense downtown ZIP and a large rural ZIP covering several hundred square miles.

Because Columbus uses FIPS code 37047, it joins cleanly to county-level federal datasets: HUD Fair Market Rent tables, FBI Uniform Crime Report data, and the Department of Labor National Database of Childcare Prices all key off the same code. That is how neighborhood scorecards combine ZIP-level Census demographics with county-level safety and affordability metrics. All data on this page comes from U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023 5-Year Estimates and USPS ZIP Code Tabulation Area files — no estimates, no proprietary sources, no editorial scoring.