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US Counties

Originally, in continental Europe, a county (comté, Grafschaft) was the land under the jurisdiction of a count (comte, Graf).

The term county is used in 48 of the 50 states of the United States for a tier of organization immediately below the statewide tier and above (where created) the municipal or civil township tier.

Louisiana has entities similar to counties but calls them parishes. Alaska is divided into boroughs, which typically provide fewer local services than do most U.S. counties, as the state government furnishes many services directly.

The US Counties

US Counties: Find a County: County Locator

Forty-eight of the fifty states have operational county governments. Alaska and Louisiana call their county type governments boroughs and parishes, respectively. Connecticut and Rhode Island are divided into geographic regions called counties, but they do not have functioning governments, as defined by the Census Bureau.

Hawaii and Delaware each have the fewest counties (3); Texas has the most (254). In addition to the 3,033 counties, there are 33 city-county governments (i.e., cities that have consolidated government functions with their surrounding counties). Jacksonville/Duval, City/County are examples of this type of government structure.

Counties vary greatly in size and population. They range in area from 26 to 87,860 square miles (i.e., Arlington County, Virginia and the North Slope Borough, Alaska). Similarly, the population of counties varies tremendously from Loving County, Texas, with its 67 residents, to Los Angeles County, California, which is home to 9,519,338 people.

Counties with populations under 50,000 accounted for nearly three-fourths of all county governments in 2000.

The US Counties - Listing of Each State's Counties

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."