Texas counties map

Look at the map and two patterns jump out. In the Panhandle and on the South Plains the counties are near-perfect squares, roughly 30 miles on a side: they were surveyed in the 1870s on a grid so that a county seat would be within a day's ride of every resident. East Texas counties are older, smaller and irregular, following rivers and Spanish-era land grants. West of the Pecos, counties are huge because the population was, and still is, sparse: Brewster, Presidio, Hudspeth and Culberson together cover more land than Massachusetts with fewer than 40,000 people.

Counties matter in Texas for taxes, courts, elections, road maintenance outside city limits and vehicle registration. Each county page lists the seat, population, area, neighboring counties and the cities inside it.

A county is run by a commissioners court: a county judge elected countywide plus four commissioners, each elected from a precinct. The court sets the county property tax rate, adopts the budget and runs the county's business; in smaller counties the county judge also hears probate and some misdemeanor cases, while in Harris or Bexar the job is administrative and the courtroom work goes to county courts at law.

The other elected offices are the ones most people deal with. The sheriff polices the unincorporated parts of the county and runs the jail. The tax assessor-collector collects property taxes for the county and often for school and hospital districts, and handles vehicle registration and titles — the county tax office is where a Texas licence plate comes from. The county clerk keeps deeds, marriage licences and probate records; the district clerk keeps the files of the district courts. Elections are administered county by county, so the ballot you get is a county ballot.

Roads are the other big job. Outside city limits, county roads and bridges are the county's to build and maintain, traditionally precinct by precinct, while state and U.S. highways stay with TxDOT. Texas counties have no general zoning power in unincorporated areas, which is why subdivisions can appear on farmland just past a city boundary. Justice of the peace courts, the constitutional county court and the district courts all sit at the county seat; a rural district court may serve several counties on a circuit.

By population the spread is the widest of any state. Harris County held 4,731,145 people in 2020 and Loving County held 64 — the smallest count in the United States. Next up from Loving are King at 265 and Kenedy at 350. By area the largest is Brewster at 6,193 sq mi, followed by Pecos at 4,765 and Hudspeth at 4,572, all of them in West Texas. The smallest are Rockwall at 149 sq mi and Somervell at 191, both close to the Dallas–Fort Worth side of the state.

To go the other way and find the county for a place, start from the city index or the Texas map with cities: each city page names its county at the top. Large cities cross county lines — Houston extends into Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, and Dallas into five — so an address, not a city name, decides which tax office and which ballot you get.