Which states have the largest typical counties?

Sort a state's county equivalents from smallest to largest by land area. The median is the middle entry when the count is odd, or the average of the two middle entries when it is even. Each county equivalent counts once. We use land so that assigned coastal and lake water does not determine the result.

The mean answers a related question: divide the combined county land area by the number of entries. A few very large counties can raise it substantially. In California, the median is 1,535.7 mi² and the mean is 2,687.2 mi², about 1.7 times as large. The table gives both so you can see when the choice matters.

These are state positions based on their county medians. They are different from the national ranks on individual county profiles. Open a state to see every county behind its summary.

The table includes county equivalents such as parishes, independent cities, boroughs, and planning regions. DC and Puerto Rico are outside this 50-state comparison; their records remain available in the DC and Puerto Rico directories and in the national county rankings.

Texas has 254 counties, the largest count among the states in this file. Its median land area is 908.7 mi², placing it 16th in the table. Georgia has 159 counties and a median of 342.7 mi². The Texas median is approximately 2.7 times Georgia's.

Compare those figures with Arizona: 15 counties, a median of 6,209.9 mi², and a position of 2. County count alone cannot predict typical county area. You need both the amount of land and the way that land is divided. The dataset measures the resulting pattern; explaining why those boundaries were established requires local historical sources.

Virginia has 133 county equivalents in this release. The median for all of them is 310 mi². Restrict the calculation to its 95 records whose official names end in “County,” and the median becomes 382.4 mi². The remaining 38 entries are independent cities.

That change comes from selecting a different group of jurisdictions, without changing a single area's measurement. Our main table keeps all county equivalents so its rule is consistent across states. A counties-only study is also possible, but it must explain how it treats other equivalent types. The independent-city guide explores this distinction at the small end of the national ranking.

Download the county CSV, retain the 50 states, and group records by state. Compute each group's median from landSqM, then sort those medians descending; alphabetical state names break exact ties. The displayed median and mean use Census-published landSqMi values, rounded here to three decimals. With an even count, the unrounded median can fall between the two central values.

Do not average the 50 state medians to obtain a national county median. States have different numbers of counties, and a median cannot generally be reconstructed by averaging group medians. Calculate the national median directly from the county records in your chosen coverage instead.

For “is this county large for its state?”, use its state median. For “where are county equivalents typically largest?”, use this table. For “how much land does this state contain?”, sum land measurements or consult the matching state-level Census file. Those questions use the same underlying geography but need different summaries.