The U.S. has roughly 41,700 ZIP codes, and most of them blend into the background of daily life. But a handful are famous in their own right — recognizable by the average person, immortalized in television and film, or assigned to single buildings whose mail volume justifies a code of their very own. Here are the most notable, the oddest, and the ones with the best stories.
No ZIP code is better-known. 90210 is one of several Beverly Hills codes (others include 90211, 90212, and 90213), but it became a cultural shorthand for wealth after the 1990 launch of the Aaron Spelling-produced TV series Beverly Hills, 90210. Real estate listings in the area still command premiums explicitly tied to a 90210 mailing address, even though Beverly Hills' boundaries don't strictly align with the ZIP code — a small piece of unincorporated Los Angeles County also sits inside the 90210 area.
Properties that fall just outside 90210 — sometimes by a single street — sell for measurably less than equivalent homes inside it, despite being functionally indistinguishable. This is one of the cleanest examples of a ZIP code carrying real economic value as a brand.
Sorted numerically, 00501 is the lowest active ZIP code in the United States. It belongs to the Internal Revenue Service processing center in Holtsville, on Long Island. The IRS receives such enormous volumes of mail — millions of returns and correspondence pieces during tax season alone — that USPS assigned the facility its own dedicated code in the 1960s, and gave it the very first slot in the numbering system.
00501 is a unique ZIP code — meaning it is not used for any residential or street delivery and exists solely to route mail to one organization. The IRS also operates several other unique codes, including 73301 (Austin, TX) and 64999 (Kansas City, MO).
The highest-numbered active ZIP code is 99950, serving parts of Ketchikan, Alaska, on the panhandle near the Canadian border. The "9" first digit reflects the original ZIP code design, in which Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, and California were all assigned to region 9 — the westernmost zone.
One of the most-asked-about ZIP codes is 12345, which is a unique code assigned to the General Electric corporate facility in Schenectady, New York. GE has been the dominant employer in Schenectady since Thomas Edison's Edison Machine Works merged into General Electric in 1892, and the company received a single dedicated code precisely because the mail volume to its sprawling campus warranted it. The "consecutive digits" novelty is a coincidence — USPS assigned codes geographically and didn't choose 12345 for any branding reason.
The Executive Residence and surrounding Eisenhower Executive Office Building campus has its own ZIP code. Letters addressed to the President of the United States are delivered to a separate intake facility for screening before reaching the building.
The two chambers of Congress each have their own dedicated ZIP code. Mail to a senator goes to 20510; mail to a representative goes to 20515. Both have been operational since the original 1963 rollout.
Mail to the CIA's Langley headquarters uses a Washington DC ZIP code rather than a Virginia one — a quirk dating back to the agency's establishment of mail handling through DC channels.
Some large universities have unique ZIP codes for their internal mail services. Notable examples:
Used for shorthand "New York City" in countless songs, films, and TV shows, 10001 actually covers a relatively small part of midtown west Manhattan, including the area around Penn Station and the Chelsea garment district. The mythical "10001" of pop culture rarely matches its geographical reality.
Fisher Island, a private island off Miami Beach reachable only by ferry, has consistently ranked as one of the highest-income ZIP codes in the United States by mean household income — repeatedly above $2 million per year, according to IRS Statistics of Income data.
One of many military ZIPs, 96863 routes mail to active service members stationed at the Marine Corps base in Kaneohe Bay, Oahu.
Puerto Rico's ZIP codes all begin with "006," "007," "009," and "00." The lowest-numbered active code on the island is 00601, serving the small mountain town of Adjuntas.
Despite being thousands of miles from the contiguous U.S., Hawaii uses ZIP codes within the standard system, starting at 96701 (Aiea) and reaching as high as 96898 (Wake Island, technically a U.S. territory rather than a state).
You sometimes hear about companies "buying" custom ZIP codes. The truth is that USPS doesn't sell vanity ZIP codes the way the FCC auctions phone numbers. To get a unique ZIP code, an organization must demonstrate consistent mail volume of roughly 10,000 pieces per day or more, and apply through the local Postmaster. The application is then forwarded to USPS headquarters for review. Approval is rare and discretionary — there's no fixed price, and USPS has rejected high-profile applicants whose volume didn't justify the assignment.
Famous ZIP codes are more than novelties. They reveal how USPS scales its routing system to handle outliers — single buildings receiving millions of pieces a year, government agencies with tight security needs, or branded geographies where the ZIP itself becomes part of the identity of a place. They also show the limits of trying to use ZIP codes as geographic boundaries, since some codes are buildings, some are entire islands, and some are just historical accidents of where the post office happens to be.
Curious what ZIP code a particular city has, or what city a code maps to? Try our free ZIP code finder for any U.S. address.