Fort Riley, KS

ZIP code 66442 is assigned to Fort Riley, KS, and falls within Geary 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 16,876 people live inside it.

At 497 residents per square mile spread over 33.968 square miles, 66442 reads as a small-town area. It is a mid-sized postal code by population, and density shapes almost everything else on this page — how people get to work, whether they own or rent, and what housing costs.

Household earnings are well below the national median. At $46,403, 66442 ranks among the lower-income postal codes, ahead of 12% of them. The US median for comparison is $70,109. Bear in mind that median income describes the midpoint household, not the average — it is not pulled upward by a handful of very high earners the way a mean would be.

Housing in 66442 costs close to the national median. A typical home is valued at $222,100 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $1,376 a month. This is firmly renter territory — 99.0% of occupied homes are rented, a pattern typical of city centres, student areas and neighbourhoods with a lot of apartment stock.

The building stock is dominated by detached single-family houses, which account for 68.1% of housing units here. The median construction year is 2010, making the housing here relatively modern. At 4.6%, vacancy is low — housing here is tightly held.

The population skews notably young, with a median age of 22.4 against 42 nationally. Households are relatively large at 4.22 people on average, with 87.9% classified as family households.

Getting to work takes 10.0 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 45.4% of workers, while 43.3% walk. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 66442 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, 66442 offers a compact profile of Fort Riley: 16,876 residents, a median household income of $46,403, 24.2% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 18.1%. 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. 66442 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Fort Riley 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.