How Many Counties Are There In The United States?
There are 3,007 political subdivisions in the United States that are formally called counties, but not every state has counties. Louisiana has parishes, while Alaska has boroughs and census areas. Some cities operate as independent cities and do not belong to any county at all, running their own governments instead. Some cities are coextensive with county boundaries, forming a consolidated city-county. Washington, D.C. is not a county either. As the national capital, its city government is merged with the entire district. Finally, US territories like Puerto Rico and Guam have local divisions that the US Census Bureau tracks separately for statistical purposes. So the answer to the question of how many counties are in the United States is: it's complicated.
Which States Have No Counties?
Louisiana and Alaska are the only two states whose primary divisions are not called counties. Louisiana is divided into parishes, while Alaska is divided into boroughs and census areas. Louisiana's use of parishes dates back to its historical relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. Colonial Louisiana was held by both France and Spain. Since both were Catholic countries, the church played a major role in administering their territories, and it set up parishes as administrative units. Those units already existed in 1812 when Louisiana joined the United States, so they remained parishes instead of being replaced with counties. Today, Louisiana has 64 parishes, which operate the same way as counties do elsewhere in the United States.
Alaska divides its land into 19 organized boroughs and one large unorganized borough that is further separated into 11 census areas. The unorganized borough covers more than half of the state's area but holds only about a tenth of its residents. Sparse population and remote geography made it impractical to divide the entire state into traditional county governments when the constitution was drafted in 1956. That constitution took effect when Alaska became a state in 1959. Organized boroughs were formed in areas where there were greater population densities and economies were better developed.
Connecticut is a third case, and a more recent one. The state abolished county governments in 1960, and in June 2022, the Census Bureau approved its request to replace the eight legacy counties with nine planning regions as county equivalents. Federal data products completed the switch by 2024, so Connecticut counties still appear on older maps, but they no longer function as governments or as census geography. The Census Bureau counts Louisiana parishes as county equivalents, and it does the same for Alaska boroughs and census areas. County equivalents also exist well outside those two states.
What Is an Independent City?
Independent cities are cities that are politically and administratively independent of the counties with which they share borders. There are 41 independent cities in the United States, 38 of which are in Virginia. The remaining three independent cities are Baltimore in Maryland, St. Louis in Missouri, and Carson City in Nevada. Rather than being part of a county government, independent cities operate their own local government and perform the same responsibilities a county would elsewhere in the United States.
Williamsburg received a royal charter as a city in 1722, when Virginia was still a colony and the legal concept of an independent city did not yet exist. The modern arrangement came much later. Virginia's constitution of 1870, which took effect in 1871, separated every incorporated city in the commonwealth from the county around it. The constitutions of 1902 and 1971 carried that rule forward. Because it applies to every incorporated city rather than to one city at a time, Virginia ended up with 38 independent cities, while the three outside it remain one-off arrangements. U.S.
What Are Consolidated City-Counties?
A consolidated city-county is the formal joining of a city or cities with a surrounding county government. The newly unified government then assumes the responsibilities of the former governments. Rather than having both a county council and a city council, the majority of consolidated city-counties have one governing council for the entire jurisdiction as well as one chief executive, like a mayor.
There are 42 city-county consolidations in the United States. Several of these are the largest cities in the country and have operated under unified governments for over a century. Some notable examples are San Francisco, which consolidated with San Francisco County in 1856, and Denver, which consolidated with Denver County in 1902.
Is Washington, D.C. Its Own County?
So, is Washington, D.C. an independent city or a consolidated city-county? Neither. It is a federal district established under the Constitution to serve as the national capital. The city government is merged with the entire district. Because the city of Washington and the District of Columbia share the exact same boundaries, the Census Bureau counts it as a county equivalent, since it performs many of the same governmental functions as a county.
Do US Territories Contribute to the Total Number of Counties?
Only local subdivisions inside the 50 states hold the formal legal designation of a county, or of a state equivalent like a Louisiana parish or an Alaska borough, and only those contribute to the official count of counties and county equivalents in the United States. The US territories do not add to that count. The Census Bureau does classify local government divisions inside the US Island Areas of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands as county equivalents for census statistics. That includes Puerto Rico's 78 municipios and the entire island of Guam as a single county equivalent.
Counting Counties
A map of the United States shows each state carved into separate counties, which makes the question look simple. The path to a total is not. The Census Bureau now counts 3,144 counties and county equivalents across the 50 states and the District of Columbia, a figure that rose by one when Connecticut switched to nine planning regions, and a wider tally that folds in the territories reaches 3,244. Counties, parishes, boroughs, independent cities, consolidated city-counties, the District of Columbia, and the territories all perform many of the same administrative functions despite operating under different legal structures. Together, they reflect the particular history and politics of each state rather than a universal nationwide system.
