Tahlequah, OK population, income and ZIP codes

Tahlequah city is a mid-size town in Oklahoma, with 16,513 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #32 of 846 ranked by population — larger than 96% of them. The median age here is 30.7 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. Places under 65,000 residents only appear in the five-year release, never the one-year file, so these values pool sixty months of responses and lag the current year by design.

Households in Tahlequah city earn a median of $48,515 a year, 38.2% below the national figure of $78,538 and 9% below the $53,500 median for the 240 Oklahoma cities we cover. The median is the midpoint household, not an average, so a handful of very high earners cannot drag it upward the way they distort a mean. Poverty reaches 20.3% of residents here, well above the 12.4% national rate, which is the single clearest signal in this dataset that median income here is carried by a narrow band of households.

The typical owner-occupied home in Tahlequah city is valued at $182,800, 39.7% below the national figure and 45% above the $125,800 peer median, while median gross rent runs $794 a month, 43.5% below the national figure, or roughly $9,528 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 19.6% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is cheap relative to what people here earn. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 3.8×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 41.2% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

Every value on this page is published directly by the Census for this area — nothing is modelled or interpolated. Small-area estimates still carry wider margins of error than state or national figures, so check the linked ACS tables before relying on them for lending, appraisal or legal work.