50 Fun Facts About US Counties

Which state is carved into 254 counties, far more than any other American state?

Texas counties range from Rockwall, at 149 square miles, to Brewster, more than 40 times larger at 6,192.

Which state calls its counties parishes, a term dating back to French and Spanish colonial rule?

Louisiana has 64 parishes, and 38 of them are still governed by a council with the unusual name of police jury.

Which county name covers both Disneyland in California and most of Walt Disney World in Florida?

Orange County in California got Disneyland in 1955, and its Florida namesake followed with Walt Disney World in 1971. A corner of the Florida resort spills into Osceola County.

Which state is divided into boroughs instead of counties, plus one vast Unorganized Borough?

Alaska's Unorganized Borough takes in nearly half the state yet has no county-style government of its own, so the state runs most of it directly.

Which island forms New York County, the most densely populated county in the United States?

Manhattan squeezes about 1.7 million residents into less than 23 square miles, which also makes New York County the smallest county by area in its state.

Which Founding Father is honored by the most common county name, used by 30 counties and one parish?

George Washington leads the list with 31 namesakes, ahead of Thomas Jefferson with 26. Franklin, with 25, is the most common county name honoring someone who was never president.

Which Florida city merged with Duval County in 1968 to become the largest by area in the lower 48?

Jacksonville spans about 874 square miles after the merger and completely surrounds the separate town of Baldwin.

Which state has the fewest counties, just three named New Castle, Kent and Sussex?

Delaware once split its counties into districts called hundreds, which survive today only in real-estate title descriptions.

Which Nevada county governs the Las Vegas Strip, which lies just outside the Las Vegas city limits?

Clark County has direct jurisdiction because the Strip's casinos stand in the unincorporated towns of Paradise and Winchester. Its namesake was a Montana copper magnate.

Which Illinois county, home to Chicago, holds more than 40 percent of the state's residents?

Cook County counted more than 5.2 million residents at the 2020 census, when only one other American county had more.

Which elected county officer's title comes from the Old English for the royal official who ran a county?

Sheriff once meant the reeve who ran an English shire for the crown. More than 95 percent of American holders of the office are still chosen by county voters.

Which California county, larger than Switzerland, is the largest by area in the lower 48 states?

San Bernardino County covers more than 20,000 square miles, reaching all the way to the Nevada border and the Colorado River.

Which state abolished county government in 1960, leaving eight counties that exist in name only?

Connecticut runs local government solely through its towns and cities, and in 2022 the Census Bureau agreed to count nine planning regions there instead of the old counties.

Which Pennsylvania county is known for Amish farms and villages named Intercourse and Bird-in-Hand?

Lancaster County's Amish trace back to settlers who began arriving in the early 18th century, drawn by the religious freedom William Penn offered.

Which county containing Seattle kept its name but officially changed the person it honors?

King County first honored William R. King, the vice president-elect of 1852, then switched to Martin Luther King Jr. without changing a letter.

Which county's covered bridges inspired a romance novel that sold 50 million copies and became a 1995 film?

Madison County still has six covered bridges, and the novel set among them spent more than three years on the New York Times bestseller list.

Which state contains 38 of the 41 American cities that legally belong to no county?

Virginia has treated every incorporated city as independent of the county around it since a revised state constitution took effect in 1871.

Which Arizona county, home to Phoenix, contains about 62 percent of the state's entire population?

Maricopa County's dominance makes Arizona one of the most centralized states; the county counted more than 4.4 million residents at the 2020 census.

Which California county, centered on San Jose, is home to Apple, Google and most of Silicon Valley?

Santa Clara County's valley was the world's largest fruit-growing and packing region through the 1960s, before chip makers replaced its orchards.

Which county, home to Houston, has more residents than any other county in Texas?

Harris County is named for John Richardson Harris, who founded the town of Harrisburg on Buffalo Bayou in 1826.

Which county, named for a cattle driver, is the least populous in America, with only 64 residents in 2020?

Loving County has a single community, Mentone, and its namesake Oliver Loving helped blaze a famous cattle trail through the area in 1866.

Which Hawaii county on Molokai served as a place of exile for leprosy patients from 1866 to 1969?

Kalawao County has no local government of its own: the state health director doubles as its mayor, and the only land route in is a mule trail down sea cliffs.

Which Missouri city voted in 1876 to secede from its surrounding county and become an independent city?

St. Louis made the split official in March 1877 after a recount, yet it still shares a zoo and museum tax district with the county it left.

Which Maryland city, independent of any county since 1851, is the most populous independent city in America?

Baltimore was the seat of the county that shares its name before the 1851 split, and that county still wraps around the city on three sides.

Which California city has been a combined city and county since 1856, when San Mateo County split away?

San Francisco's mayor doubles as county executive, and the city owns and runs an airport that actually sits in San Mateo County.

Which Ohio county, home to Cleveland, shares its name with a river that caught fire in 1969?

Cuyahoga River fires broke out at least 14 times, and news coverage of the 1969 blaze helped spur the American environmental movement.

Which Southern state has 159 counties, a total capped by a 1945 amendment to its constitution?

Georgia drew its counties small, by one traditional reasoning, so a farmer could ride to the county seat and back home in a single day.

Which state's 99 counties are all visited by candidates completing a tour nicknamed the full Grassley?

Iowa senator Chuck Grassley inspired the term by holding public meetings in all 99 counties every year after taking office in 1981.

Which Massachusetts island south of Cape Cod is run as a single combined town and county government?

Nantucket was officially part of New York until 1691, when the charter for the new Province of Massachusetts Bay was signed.

Which Tennessee county is home to the Jack Daniel's distillery yet has stayed a dry county for a century?

Moore County's dry status dates to state prohibition laws of the early 20th century, even though whiskey making there began in the 1820s.

Which Florida county includes Key West and nearly all of the Florida Keys?

Monroe County's mainland portion, part of the Everglades, makes up 87 percent of its land yet had only 17 residents at the 2020 census.

Which Florida county, home to Kennedy Space Center, was given area code 321 as a nod to launch countdowns?

Brevard County got the countdown code after a volunteer at a local space museum petitioned for it.

Which Massachusetts county, home to Salem, held the 1812 district that inspired the word gerrymander?

Essex County's district was drawn to favor Governor Elbridge Gerry's party, and critics likened its twisting shape to a salamander.

Which New York county hosted the 1969 Woodstock festival, well away from the town of Woodstock itself?

Sullivan County's town of Bethel welcomed the crowds to Max Yasgur's dairy farm after a law banned the festival from its planned site in Wallkill.

Which Nevada county, governed from the town of Pioche, contains the secretive base known as Area 51?

Lincoln County was almost named Stewart County, after a Nevada senator, before a substitute bill honored the 16th president instead.

Which California county holds both Mount Whitney and Death Valley's Badwater Basin, under 90 miles apart?

Inyo County holds the highest point in the contiguous United States and the lowest point in North America, yet only about 19,000 people live there.

Which Michigan county, home to Detroit, is named for a Revolutionary War general nicknamed Mad Anthony?

Wayne County, formed in 1796, originally covered nearly all of present-day Michigan plus slices of four neighboring states.

Roughly how many counties are there in the 50 states, counting parishes, boroughs and independent cities?

About 3,000 is the round figure: the official tally of counties and their equivalents is 3,144, an average of about 63 for each state.

Which Pennsylvania county around Gettysburg was named in 1800 for the president then in office?

Adams County was carved out of York County in January 1800, when its namesake still had more than a year left in the White House.

Which state called its county legislators chosen freeholders until 2020, a title used nowhere else?

New Jersey's old title dated to a colonial law of 1714 that had each town choose two freeholders, meaning landowners, to help run county business.

Which Midwestern state capital merged with Marion County in 1970 under a system nicknamed Unigov?

Indianapolis adopted the plan under Mayor Richard Lugar, a future senator, though four communities including Speedway kept limited autonomy.

Which New Mexico county, the state's smallest by area, was formed in 1949 around an atomic laboratory?

Los Alamos means the poplars or cottonwoods in Spanish, and the federal government ran the land exclusively during the wartime bomb project.

Which North Carolina county on the Outer Banks is named for the first English child born in the Americas?

Dare County, whose namesake was born within its present borders, is also home to the Wright Brothers National Memorial.

Which Arizona county, whose first seat was Tombstone, is named for a Chiricahua Apache war leader?

Cochise County kept its seat in Tombstone, scene of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, until the government moved to Bisbee in 1929.

Which state renamed Shannon County as Oglala Lakota County in 2015, honoring the people of Pine Ridge?

South Dakota's renamed county lies entirely within the reservation and has no functioning county seat, so a town in the next county handles its administration.

Which US territory is divided into 78 municipalities, each treated as the equivalent of a county?

Puerto Rico's municipalities each elect their own mayor, and two of them, Vieques and Culebra, are separate islands off the main one.

Which county, whose seat is San Antonio, has a Spanish name usually pronounced like the word bear?

Bexar County's namesake settlement was founded in 1731, when 55 Canary Islanders settled beside a Spanish military outpost.

Which Kentucky coal county is the setting of an Oscar-winning 1976 documentary about a miners' strike?

Harlan County USA followed 180 coal miners and their wives through the Brookside strike that began in 1973, and it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Which county, home to the Pentagon, is the smallest self-governing county in the United States by area?

Arlington was known as Alexandria County during its decades inside the District of Columbia, before the land was handed back in the 1840s.

Which Nevada municipality merged with Ormsby County in 1969, stretching its limits to the middle of Lake Tahoe?

Carson City already held all but 2,900 of the county's residents by 1960, and the merger made it an independent city outside any county.