Window Rock, AZ

ZIP code 86515 is assigned to Window Rock, AZ, and falls within Apache 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 3,198 people live inside it.

At 28 residents per square mile spread over 115.633 square miles, 86515 reads as a rural area. It is a smaller 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 $43,152, 86515 ranks among the lower-income postal codes, ahead of 9% 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 86515 costs well below the national median. A typical home is valued at $57,100 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $661 a month. The split between owning and renting is fairly even at 51.9% owner-occupied, which tends to indicate a mix of housing types rather than one dominant form.

The building stock is dominated by detached single-family houses, which account for 51.0% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1983, making the housing here from the later twentieth century. The vacancy rate of 23.7% is high, which in many places reflects seasonal or second-home use rather than abandonment.

The population skews broadly in line with the national age profile, with a median age of 36.9 against 42 nationally. The average household holds 2.9 people, and 63.9% are family households.

Getting to work takes 22.1 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 82.4% of workers, while 11.7% work from home. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 86515 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, 86515 offers a compact profile of Window Rock: 3,198 residents, a median household income of $43,152, 19.9% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 10.3%. 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. 86515 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Window Rock 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.