| Counties of Washington | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Location | State of Washington |
| Number | 39 |
| Populations | 2,363 (Garfield) – 2,271,380 (King) |
| Areas | 175 square miles (450 km2) (San Juan) – 5,268 square miles (13,640 km2) (Okanogan) |
| Government | |
| Subdivisions |
|
The U.S. state of Washington has 39 counties. The Provisional Government of Oregon established Vancouver and Lewis Counties in 1845 in unorganized Oregon Country, extending from the Columbia River north to 54°40′ north latitude. After the region was organized within the Oregon Territory with the current northern border of 49° north, Vancouver County was renamed Clark, and six more counties were created out of Lewis County before the organization of Washington Territory in 1853; 28 were formed during Washington's territorial period, two of which only existed briefly. The final five were established in the 22 years after Washington was admitted to the Union as the 42nd state in 1889.[1][2]
Article XI of the Washington State Constitution addresses the organization of counties. New counties must have a population of at least 2,000 and no county can be reduced to a population below 4,000 due to partitioning to create a new county.[3] To alter the area of a county, the state constitution requires a petition of the "majority of the voters" in that area. A number of county partition proposals in the 1990s interpreted this as a majority of people who voted, until a 1998 ruling by the Washington Supreme Court clarified that they would need a majority of registered voters.[4] No changes to counties have been made since the formation of Pend Oreille County in 1911, except when the small area of Cliffdell was moved from Kittitas to Yakima County in 1970.[5]
King County, home to the state's largest city, Seattle, holds almost 30 percent of Washington's population (2,271,380 residents of 7,812,880 in 2023), and has the highest population density, with more than 1,000 people per square mile (400/km2). Garfield County is both the least populated (2,363) and least densely populated (3.3/sq mi [1.3/km2]). Two counties, San Juan and Island, are composed only of islands. The average county is 1,830 square miles (4,700 km2), with 200,330 people.
Seventeen counties have Native American–derived names, including nine names of tribes whose land settlers would occupy. Another seventeen were named for political figures, only five of whom had lived in the region. The last five are named for geographic places.[6]
The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) code, used by the United States government to uniquely identify counties, is provided with each entry. The FIPS code links in the table point to U.S. Census data pages for each county. Washington's FIPS state code is 53.
- ^ "Washington: Consolidated Chronology of State and County Boundaries". Washington Atlas of Historical County Boundaries. Newberry Library. Archived from the original on January 1, 2016. Retrieved February 10, 2020.
- ^ Smith 1913, p. 1 (As noted on p. 15, Pend Oreille County was not included in this tally because it was organized after the article was first published in 1909.)
- ^ "Article XI, Section 3: New Counties". Washington State Constitution. Washington State Office of the Code Reviser. Retrieved March 31, 2020.
- ^ Spencer, Hal (February 6, 1998). "New counties dealt major blow". The Spokesman-Review. Associated Press. p. B8. Retrieved March 31, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
Cedar County Committee v. Munro, 134 Wash. 2d 377 (Supreme Court of Washington 1998). - ^ "Area Transferred". Longview Daily News. Associated Press. September 22, 1970. p. 3. Retrieved February 10, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Smith15was invoked but never defined (see the help page).