Dalton, MO

ZIP code 65246 is assigned to Dalton, MO, and falls within Chariton County. Like every US postal code, it began as a mail-routing device rather than a geographic boundary — the US Postal Service groups delivery routes under a single code so carriers and sorting equipment can process mail efficiently. Today it also serves as a practical shorthand for the area itself: roughly 58 people live inside it.

At 2 residents per square mile spread over 35.634 square miles, 65246 reads as a rural area. It is a sparsely populated postal code, and density shapes almost everything else on this page — how people get to work, whether they own or rent, and what housing costs.

Housing in 65246 costs well below the national median. A typical home is valued at $58,000 against a US median of $207,500. Ownership dominates: 95.2% of occupied homes are owner-occupied, which usually signals an established residential area with relatively low turnover.

The building stock is dominated by larger apartment buildings of twenty units or more, which account for 60.0% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1975, making the housing here from the later twentieth century. The vacancy rate of 53.3% is high, which in many places reflects seasonal or second-home use rather than abandonment.

The population skews considerably older than the national median, with a median age of 72.3 against 42 nationally. The average household holds 2.76 people, and 71.4% are family households.

Getting to work takes 38.8 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 56.5% of workers, while 43.5% work from home. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 65246 does a lot of quiet administrative work. Retailers use it to calculate shipping and sales tax at checkout. Insurers use it to set premiums, since risk profiles vary geographically. Employers and marketers use it to define service areas. Government agencies use it to route benefits and organise reporting. If you have ever been asked for a postal code by a form that clearly does not intend to send you anything, this is why.

For anyone weighing a move, 65246 offers a compact profile of Dalton: 58 residents, 0.0% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 0.0%. A handful of figures like these answer more relocation questions than most neighbourhood guides do.

One caution worth repeating: a postal code is not a neighbourhood. 65246 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Dalton may be split across more than one code. Boundaries also shift as USPS adjusts delivery routes. Treat the figures here as describing a delivery area, which is what they actually measure.