Florida county map

How Florida’s counties are laid out

Florida’s 67 counties cover 65,758 square miles, about 980 square miles each on average, but the range is wide: Palm Beach County is more than three times the size of tiny Union County in the north-central part of the state. The first two counties, Escambia and St. Johns, were created in 1821 when Spain handed the territory to the United States; Escambia took the west (Pensacola) and St. Johns the east (St. Augustine). Every later county was carved from those two.

The county map has a clear pattern. The Panhandle and north Florida are made of small, old, rural counties laid out along the Apalachicola, Suwannee and St. Johns rivers. The peninsula south of Orlando is made of large counties, most created between 1887 and 1925 as the railways opened the lower peninsula: Palm Beach, Broward, Collier, Hendry, Glades, Okeechobee, Martin, Indian River and Gulf all date from that period. Lake Okeechobee is shared between five of them.

Florida is a split time-zone state. Ten Panhandle counties west of the Apalachicola River — Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Holmes, Washington, Bay, Jackson, Calhoun and most of Gulf County — keep Central Time; the rest of the state, including Tallahassee, is on Eastern Time. The boundary follows the Apalachicola and then cuts across Gulf County so that the county seat, Port St. Joe, is on Eastern time while Wewahitchka in the north of the county is on Central.

All 67 counties of Florida

Five county facts

• Largest by area: Palm Beach County, about 2,400 square miles including its share of Lake Okeechobee. By land alone it is roughly tied with Collier County (Naples), which stretches across the Big Cypress swamp to the Everglades. Monroe County is larger still if its water is counted, since it takes in Florida Bay and the Keys.
• Smallest by area: Union County, seat Lake Butler, about 250 square miles, created in 1921 from Bradford County. Pinellas County (Clearwater and St. Petersburg) is the second-smallest but the most densely populated.
• Most populous: Miami-Dade County, about 2.7 million people in 2020 — more than 15 US states. Broward (about 1.9 million), Palm Beach, Hillsborough and Orange counties follow, each above 1.4 million. The county was renamed from Dade to Miami-Dade in 1997.
• Least populous: Liberty County, seat Bristol, on the east bank of the Apalachicola River, with fewer than 8,000 residents; most of it is Apalachicola National Forest. Lafayette County (Mayo) is next-smallest.
• Oldest and newest: Escambia and St. Johns, both created 21 July 1821, are the oldest. Gilchrist County, split from Alachua in 1925, is the newest. Florida has no independent cities, but Jacksonville and Duval County have been consolidated since 1968, which is why Jacksonville is the largest city by area in the contiguous US; Miami-Dade has a two-tier county government that acts as a city for its unincorporated areas.

Reading the map

Press Streets and zoom in to see the county lines. The line between Monroe and Miami-Dade runs through the Everglades, so the Keys and mainland Everglades share one county with its seat at Key West, 130 miles from the mainland by road. The peninsula’s big counties all have their seats on the coast or on the old railway line down the centre — Bartow, Sebring, Okeechobee, Moore Haven — while the Gulf coast between Tampa Bay and the Panhandle (the “Nature Coast”: Levy, Dixie, Taylor) is thinly settled. Orange County holds Orlando, Leon County holds Tallahassee, and Duval County holds the state’s largest city, Jacksonville.

Related maps

• Florida map — cities, borders and geography.
• Blank Florida map and printable Florida map.
• Tallahassee, the capital, in Leon County; Miami in Miami-Dade.
• Neighbouring county maps: Georgia, Alabama.
• South Atlantic states · the South · Gulf Coast · Eastern and Central time zones.
• Geography: Gulf of Mexico, US coastlines, national parks (Everglades, Biscayne, Dry Tortugas).
• All US county maps.