New York county map

How New York’s counties are laid out

New York’s 62 counties divide 54,555 square miles and 20,201,249 people (2020), and the split is extreme. The five counties that make up New York City — Kings (Brooklyn), Queens, New York (Manhattan), Bronx and Richmond (Staten Island) — cover about 300 square miles and hold 8.8 million people; with Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and Rockland the downstate counties account for two-thirds of the state. Upstate, the population follows the Erie Canal and Interstate 90 from Albany through Schenectady, Oneida (Utica), Onondaga (Syracuse), Monroe (Rochester) and Erie (Buffalo), while the Adirondack and Catskill counties in between are mostly forest preserve.

Twelve counties were created in 1683 by the first colonial assembly, ten of which survive: Albany, Dutchess, Kings, New York, Orange, Queens, Richmond, Suffolk, Ulster and Westchester (Cornwall and Dukes counties were later ceded to Maine and Massachusetts). The rest of upstate was organised as settlement moved west after the Revolution, mostly by splitting the enormous original Albany, Tryon (renamed Montgomery) and Ontario counties between 1772 and 1817. Many names record the period: Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Steuben, Schuyler and the Roman-revival names of the Military Tract — Cayuga, Onondaga and Seneca are Iroquois, but Ontario County’s townships gave the state Rome, Syracuse and Ithaca.

The five boroughs are counties in name only: they have no county government, and their functions passed to the city in 1898. Elsewhere, counties are the main unit of local government above the towns and cities, with elected legislatures and, in the larger ones, a county executive. The whole state is on Eastern Time.

All 62 counties of New York

Five county facts

• Largest by area: St. Lawrence County, seat Canton, about 2,700 square miles of land along the St. Lawrence River and the north-western Adirondacks. Hamilton, Essex and Franklin counties, also in the Adirondacks, and Delaware and Steuben in the south are each over 1,400 square miles.
• Smallest by area: New York County (Manhattan), about 23 square miles of land, followed by the Bronx and Kings County at about 42 and 70 square miles. Manhattan is nonetheless the most densely populated county in the United States, with about 1.7 million people.
• Most populous: Kings County (Brooklyn), with about 2,736,000 people in 2020 — if it were a city on its own it would be the fourth-largest in the country. Queens (about 2,405,000), New York (about 1,694,000), Suffolk (about 1,526,000) and the Bronx (about 1,472,000) follow.
• Least populous: Hamilton County, seat Lake Pleasant, with about 5,100 people in 1,700 square miles of the central Adirondacks — the only county in the state without a traffic light on a state highway, and one of the least populous east of the Mississippi. Schuyler, Yates and Lewis counties are the next smallest.
• Oldest and newest: The ten surviving counties of 1683 are the oldest. Bronx County, separated from New York County in 1914, is the newest. New York has no independent cities, but the five boroughs of New York City function as a single city rather than as counties.

Reading the map

Press Streets and zoom in on the highlighted state to see county lines. The Hudson River runs from Essex County south through Warren, Saratoga, Albany and Rensselaer, then separates Greene, Ulster, Orange and Rockland counties on its west bank from Columbia, Dutchess, Putnam and Westchester on the east before reaching Manhattan. The Mohawk valley counties — Montgomery, Herkimer, Oneida — carry the canal and railroad west to the Finger Lakes counties of Cayuga, Seneca, Ontario, Yates and Schuyler. Erie, Niagara, Orleans, Monroe, Wayne, Cayuga, Oswego and Jefferson counties front the Great Lakes; Chautauqua County in the far south-west touches Lake Erie and Pennsylvania. Long Island is divided lengthways into Kings, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk counties, with Suffolk alone stretching 90 miles to Montauk Point.

Related maps

• New York map — cities, borders and geography.
• Blank New York map and printable New York map.
• Albany, the state capital, in Albany County; New York City, the largest city in the country.
• Neighbouring county maps: Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania.
• Middle Atlantic division · the Northeast · Great Lakes region · Eastern Time Zone.
• Geography: Hudson River, Great Lakes, Appalachian Mountains.
• All US county maps.