5 states · about 1,630 mi of general coastline · 63,327,007 people · Central and Eastern time
Gulf Coast states map
The Gulf Coast states are the five with a shore on the Gulf of Mexico: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Two of them are among the four most populous states in the country.
How the region is defined
The Gulf Coast is defined by the shoreline: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida each touch the Gulf of Mexico, and no other state does. As a region it usually means the coastal plain within 50–100 miles of the water rather than the whole of each state — Dallas and Atlanta-facing north Florida are not "Gulf Coast" in everyday use — but there is no fixed inland edge, so the table gives whole-state figures. The Census puts Florida in the South Atlantic, Alabama and Mississippi in the East South Central, and Louisiana and Texas in the West South Central.
The five states had 63,327,007 people in 2020 on 487,584 square miles. Texas and Florida account for 80% of that. Houston (2,304,580), 50 miles from the Gulf by ship channel, is the largest city; New Orleans, Tampa, Corpus Christi, Mobile and Pensacola are the other major ports.
States, capitals and largest cities
| State | Capital | Largest city | Population (2020) | Area (sq mi) | Gulf shore |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Texas (TX) | Austin | Houston | 29,145,505 | 268,596 | about 370 mi |
| Louisiana (LA) | Baton Rouge | New Orleans | 4,657,757 | 52,378 | about 400 mi |
| Mississippi (MS) | Jackson | Jackson | 2,961,279 | 48,432 | about 45 mi |
| Alabama (AL) | Montgomery | Huntsville | 5,024,279 | 52,420 | about 50 mi |
| Florida (FL) | Tallahassee | Jacksonville | 21,538,187 | 65,758 | about 770 mi (Gulf side) |
| Total (5 states) | 63,327,007 | 487,584 |
Geography
The Gulf shore is about 1,630 miles long measured as general coastline and many times that including bays and islands. Almost all of it is barrier-island coast — Padre Island in Texas is the longest barrier island in the world at 113 miles — backed by lagoons such as Laguna Madre, Mobile Bay and Tampa Bay. The exception is the Mississippi delta, where the river has built Louisiana's ragged, marshy coast out into the Gulf; those marshes are now sinking and eroding at a rate of roughly a football field of land an hour. The Florida Big Bend, between the Panhandle and the peninsula, is the one stretch with no barrier islands and almost no beach.
The coastal plain behind the shore is flat and low: New Orleans averages 6 ft below sea level, Houston is about 50 ft above, and no point within 50 miles of the Gulf exceeds 300 ft. Rivers reaching the Gulf include the Rio Grande, Nueces, Colorado (of Texas), Brazos, Trinity, Sabine (the Texas–Louisiana border), Mississippi, Pearl (the Louisiana–Mississippi border), Mobile, Apalachicola and Suwannee. The Intracoastal Waterway links the whole coast from Brownsville to Florida by protected channel.
The region takes more hurricane landfalls than any other part of the country — Galveston 1900, Camille 1969, Andrew 1992, Katrina 2005, Harvey 2017, Ian 2022 — and the shallow, warm Gulf waters feed them. Time zones: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle are Central; peninsular Florida is Eastern.
Related maps
- Official versions: South region, West South Central, East South Central, South Atlantic.
- Overlapping informal regions: Southeast, Southwest.
- Quiz: Southern states quiz.
- Cities: Houston, New Orleans, Miami, Jacksonville; capitals Austin, Baton Rouge, Jackson, Montgomery, Tallahassee.
- Geography: Gulf of Mexico, Mississippi River, Coastlines.