Mississippi county map

How Mississippi’s counties are laid out

Mississippi’s 82 counties are small and numerous: the state covers 48,432 square miles, so the average county is under 600 square miles. The earliest counties — Adams (Natchez), Jefferson, Wilkinson, Claiborne and Warren (Vicksburg) — sit along the Mississippi River bluffs in the south-west, where the territorial government was based. The Gulf coast counties Hancock, Harrison and Jackson were organised in 1812 after the annexation of West Florida. The large blocks of northern counties date from the Choctaw cession of 1830 and the Chickasaw cession of 1832, which opened the whole northern half of the state at once; 16 counties were created in a single act of 1836.

Ten counties keep two county seats, a legacy of the days when crossing a swollen river to reach the courthouse was a day’s journey: Bolivar (Cleveland and Rosedale), Carroll, Chickasaw, Harrison (Gulfport and Biloxi), Hinds (Jackson and Raymond), Jasper, Jones (Laurel and Ellisville), Panola, Tallahatchie and Yalobusha. The table lists both. Jackson, the capital and largest city, is the seat of Hinds County but extends into Madison and Rankin counties. Mississippi has no independent cities.

All 82 counties of Mississippi

Five county facts

• Largest by area: Yazoo County, seat Yazoo City, about 920 square miles where the flat Delta meets the loess hills north-west of Jackson. Bolivar and Jackson counties are close behind.
• Smallest by area: Alcorn County in the north-east corner, seat Corinth, about 400 square miles. Corinth was the rail junction fought over in 1862 after the Battle of Shiloh, just across the Tennessee line.
• Most populous: Hinds County, seat Jackson, with about 217,000 people in 2020 — though it has been losing residents to Rankin, Madison and DeSoto counties. Harrison County (Gulfport–Biloxi) and DeSoto County, the Memphis suburbs, are second and third.
• Least populous: Issaquena County on the Mississippi River south of the Delta, seat Mayersville, with about 1,300 people — one of the least populated counties east of the Rockies and the only one in the state without a single incorporated town of any size. Sharkey County next door is the second smallest.
• Oldest and newest: Adams County, organised at Natchez in 1799 under Mississippi Territory, is the oldest. Humphreys County in the Delta, created in 1918 from parts of Holmes, Sunflower, Washington and Yazoo, is the newest; Walthall (1910) and Stone (1916) were created just before it. Mississippi has no independent cities.

Reading the map

Press Streets and zoom in. The western county boundaries follow the meanders of the Mississippi River from DeSoto County in the north to Wilkinson County in the south; several old river bends now leave slivers of Mississippi counties on the Arkansas or Louisiana bank. The Delta — the flat floodplain between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers — is the block of counties from Tunica and Coahoma south through Bolivar, Sunflower, Washington, Leflore, Humphreys and Sharkey to Issaquena and Yazoo. The Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway runs down the eastern counties from Tishomingo through Itawamba, Monroe, Clay and Lowndes. Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties are the three on the Gulf of Mexico. The whole state is on Central Time.

Related maps

• Mississippi map — cities, borders and rivers.
• Blank Mississippi map and printable Mississippi map.
• Jackson, the state capital, in Hinds County.
• Neighbouring county maps: Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas.
• East South Central states · the South · Gulf Coast · Central Time Zone.
• Geography: Mississippi River, Gulf of Mexico, US rivers.
• All US county maps.