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.
Governance
Population density map of Washington
Counties provide a broad scope of services, including court operation, parks and recreation, libraries, arts, social services, elections, waste collection, roads and transportation, zoning and permitting, as well as taxation.[7][8] The extent of these vary, and some are administered by municipalities. Counties are not subdivided into minor civil divisions like townships; sub-county local government is only by incorporated cities and towns, as well as by 29 Indian reservations, while unincorporated areas are governed only by the county. There are 242 census county divisions for statistical purposes only.[9]
The default form of county government is the non-charter commission, with three to five elected commissioners serving as both the legislature and executive. Seven counties have adopted charters providing for home rule distinct from state law: King, Clallam, Whatcom, Snohomish, Pierce, San Juan, and Clark. Of these, King, Whatcom, Snohomish, and Pierce, four major counties on Puget Sound, elect a county executive. Councils in the other three charter counties appoint a manager to administer the government.[10] Voters may also elect a clerk, treasurer, sheriff, assessor, coroner, auditor (or recorder), and prosecuting attorney. Elections are nonpartisan in non-charter counties, but charter counties may choose to make some positions partisan, though all elections are by top-two primary.[10]
List of counties
Former county names
Four counties changed their name between 1849 and 1925.
Sawamish County, originally named for the Sahewamish Native American tribe, was renamed Mason County in 1864.[44]
Slaughter County, originally named for Lieutenant William A. Slaughter who was killed during the Indian Wars, was renamed Kitsap County shortly after its formation in 1857.[45] The initial proposals for this county called it Madison County or Kitsap County.[46]
Vancouver County, originally named for George Vancouver, was renamed Clarke County in 1849[47][48] and corrected to Clark in 1925.[49]
Former counties
During Washington's territorial period, Washington split off from an Oregon county, three counties were disestablished, and three split into separate territories.
Clackamas County, Oregon was established in 1844 and included the land south and east of the Columbia River until Washington Territory was formed in 1853, when the area was no longer organized as a county.[50]
Spokane County was established in Washington Territory in 1858 until it merged into Stevens County in 1864; it was reestablished in 1879.[51]
Missoula County was established in Washington Territory in 1860 until it split off with the Idaho Territory in 1863.[51]
Ferguson County, named for Washington legislator James L. Ferguson, was established on January 23, 1863, from Walla Walla County and dissolved on January 18, 1865. Yakima County was established in its place.[52][53]
Quillehuyte County was split from Jefferson and Clallam counties in 1868 and returned to those counties a year later before it could be organized.[54]
Proposed counties
Several counties were proposed prior to or during the existence of Washington Territory and nine counties were proposed within the first 16 years of Washington's statehood, but none were established.
The representatives at the Cowlitz Convention of 1851 discussed a proposal to form Columbia Territory, which included a number of new counties in what later became Washington. The next session of the Oregon Territorial Legislature created only one of these counties: Thurston County (which was originally proposed as Simmons County).[55][56]
Buchanan County was proposed in 1856 as a division of Clark County.[57]
Proposed counties during Washington's early statehood included Big Bend (1891), Palouse (1891 and 1903), Sherman (1891), Washington (1891), Wenatchee (1893), McKinley (1903), Steptoe (1903), and Coulee (1905).[6]
Since the 1990s, there have been several proposals for county secession in Washington, largely from rural areas in the major counties of Western Washington. Cedar, Freedom, and Skykomish counties submitted petitions to secede from King and Snohomish counties in 1995 and 1996, with some support in the state legislature to put them to a public referendum.[4][58][59]
^"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.
^ a bSpencer, 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.
^ a bSmith 1913, pp. 13–15
^"Services". King County. Retrieved May 30, 2020.
^"County Services". Spokane County. Retrieved May 30, 2020.
^"Washington: Basic Information". 2010 Census Gazetteer Files. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved February 9, 2020.
^Brodeur, Nicole (January 20, 2020). "Remembering fight to change county namesake". The Seattle Times. p. A1. Retrieved April 1, 2020.
^ a b cPhillips 1971, pp. 72–73
^ a bPhillips 1971, pp. 77–79
^Phillips 1971, p. 87
^Phillips 1971, p. 100
^Phillips 1971, p. 105
^ a bPhillips 1971, pp. 107–108
^Phillips 1971, p. 124
^ a bPhillips 1971, pp. 130–131
^Phillips 1971, p. 133
^Phillips 1971, p. 138
^Phillips 1971, p. 144
^ a bPhillips 1971, pp. 153–154
^Phillips 1971, p. 158
^Phillips 1971, p. 159
^Phillips 1971, p. 163
^Ott, Jennifer (July 1, 2008). "Chehalis – Thumbnail History". HistoryLink. Retrieved September 26, 2012.
^"Chapter 77 (S.B. 297), Changing Name of Chehalis County". Session Laws of the State of Washington. 1915. p. 250. Retrieved June 12, 2020.
^Wilma, David (April 19, 2006). "Washington Territorial Legislature creates Sawamish (Mason) County on April 15, 1854". HistoryLink. Retrieved March 5, 2012.
^Wilma, David (July 27, 2006). "Slaughter County is renamed Kitsap County on July 13, 1857". HistoryLink. Retrieved March 16, 2012.
^Smith 1913, pp. 7–8
^Smith 1913, pp. 1–2
^Holman 1910, pp. 3–5
^Hanable, William S. (February 4, 2004). "Clark County — Thumbnail History". HistoryLink. Retrieved June 12, 2020.
^"Oregon: Consolidated Chronology of State and County Boundaries". Oregon Atlas of Historical County Boundaries. Newberry Library. Retrieved June 27, 2020.
^ a b c"Washington: Consolidated Chronology of State and County Boundaries". Newberry Library. Retrieved February 10, 2020.
^Becker, Paula (September 20, 2005). "Ferguson County is established on January 23, 1863". HistoryLink. Retrieved March 5, 2012.
^"Milestones for Washington State History – Part 2: 1851 to 1900". HistoryLink. March 6, 2003. Retrieved March 5, 2012.
^Smith 1913, p. 11
^Smith 1913, pp. 3–4
^Meany 1922, pp. 11–12
^Smith 1913, p. 7
^Robertson, Kipp (March 8, 2019). "Splitting King County? Citizens fought to secede in the 90s". KING 5 News. Retrieved August 3, 2020.
^Brooks, Diane (March 21, 1997). "House OKs Nov. vote on Skykomish County". The Seattle Times. Retrieved August 3, 2020.
Works
Holman, Frederick V. (March 1910). "History of the Counties of Oregon". Oregon Historical Quarterly. XI (1). Portland, Oregon: Ivy Press.
Meany, Edmond S. (January 1922). "The Cowlitz Convention: Inception of Washington Territory". The Washington Historical Quarterly. XIII (1). Seattle, Washington: University of Washington.
