County seat

A county seat is an administrative center for a county or civil parish, primarily used in the United States.

In the Northeast United States, the statutory term often is shire town, but colloquially county seat is the term in use there. Parts of the Canadian Maritimes also use the term shire town. In England, Wales and Ireland, the term county town is used. This term is still sometimes used colloquially in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but today neither are divided into administrative counties – instead being divided, respectively, into council areas and districts. Louisiana uses parishes instead of counties, and the administrative center is a parish seat. Alaska is organized into "boroughs", which are large districts, and the administrative center is known as a borough seat.

Function

United States counties, as in England and Canada, function as administrative subdivisions of a state and have no sovereign jurisdiction of their own, although some have authority to enact and enforce municipal ordinances. Counties administer state or provincial law at the local level as part of the decentralization of state/provincial authority. In many U.S. states, state government is further decentralized by dividing counties into townships, to provide local government services to residents of the county who do not live in incorporated cities or towns.

A county seat is usually, but not always, an incorporated municipality. The exceptions include, but are not limited to, the county seats of counties that have no incorporated municipalities within their borders, such as Arlington County, Virginia and Howard County, Maryland. (Ellicott City, the county seat of Howard County, is the largest unincorporated county seat in the United States, followed by Towson, the county seat of Baltimore County, Maryland.) The county courthouse and county administration are usually located in the county seat, but some functions may also be conducted in other parts of the county, especially if it is geographically large.

U.S. counties with more than one county seat

Most counties have only one county seat. However, some counties in Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, and Vermont have two or more county seats, usually located on opposite sides of the county. An example is Harrison County, Mississippi, which lists both Biloxi and Gulfport as county seats. The practice of multiple county seat towns dates from the days when travel was difficult. There have been few efforts to eliminate the two-seat arrangement, since a county seat is a source of pride (and jobs) for the towns involved.

There are 33 counties with multiple county seats (no more than two each) in 11 states:

Coffee County, Alabama

St. Clair County, Alabama

Arkansas County, Arkansas

Carroll County, Arkansas

Clay County, Arkansas

Craighead County, Arkansas

Franklin County, Arkansas

Logan County, Arkansas

Mississippi County, Arkansas

Prairie County, Arkansas

Sebastian County, Arkansas

Yell County, Arkansas

Lee County, Iowa

Kenton County, Kentucky

Essex County, Massachusetts

Middlesex County, Massachusetts

Plymouth County, Massachusetts

Bolivar County, Mississippi

Carroll County, Mississippi

Chickasaw County, Mississippi

Harrison County, Mississippi

Hinds County, Mississippi

Jasper County, Mississippi

Jones County, Mississippi

Panola County, Mississippi

Tallahatchie County, Mississippi

Yalobusha County, Mississippi

Jackson County, Missouri

Hillsborough County, New Hampshire

Oswego County, New York

Seneca County, New York

Guilford County, North Carolina

Bennington County, Vermont

Other variations

Connecticut (since 1960) and Rhode Island have no county level of government and thus no county seats; in those states, counties exist today as little more than lines drawn on a map (and a judicial function in Rhode Island).

In Vermont, the county seats are called shire towns. County government consists only of a Superior Court and Sheriff (as an officer of the court), both located in the respective shire town. Bennington County has two shire towns (Manchester for the North Shire, Bennington for the South Shire), but both the Court and the Sheriff are in Bennington.

In Massachusetts, most government functions which would otherwise be performed by county governments in other states are performed by town governments (there are no unincorporated areas in the state, that is, all land area in the state is within a town). As such, Massachusetts has dissolved many of its county governments, and the state government now operates the registries of deeds and sheriff's offices in those former counties.

Two counties in South Dakota (Shannon and Todd) have their county seat and government services centered in a neighboring county. Their county-level services are provided by Fall River County and Tripp County, respectively.

Lists of U.S. county seats by state

The state with the greatest number of counties is Texas, with 254. {| border="0" |----- |

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Delaware

Florida

Georgia

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Hawaii

Idaho

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Kansas

Kentucky

Louisiana

Maine

Maryland

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Massachusetts

Michigan

Minnesota

Mississippi

Missouri

Montana

Nebraska

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Jersey

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New Mexico

New York

North Carolina

North Dakota

Ohio

Oklahoma

Oregon

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

South Carolina

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South Dakota

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

Vermont

Virginia

Washington

West Virginia

Wisconsin

Wyoming

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Similar administrative seats in other countries

Amphoe (Thailand)

Municipio (Mexico)

References

External links

National Association of Counties

Category:Capitals Category:Counties of the United States