North Carolina county map

How North Carolina’s counties are laid out

North Carolina’s 100 counties cover 53,819 square miles, so the average county is only about 540 square miles — small enough that a county seat was within a day’s ride of every farm, which was the 18th-century rule. The 10,439,388 people counted in 2020 are spread more evenly than in most states: no county holds more than 11 per cent, and the two biggest, Wake (Raleigh) and Mecklenburg (Charlotte), are 150 miles apart. The Piedmont counties along Interstate 85 from Charlotte through Salisbury, Greensboro and Durham to Raleigh hold most of the population; the mountain counties in the west and the coastal plain in the east are far more rural.

The oldest counties began as precincts of Albemarle County in the 1660s and 1670s — Chowan, Currituck, Pasquotank and Perquimans, all on Albemarle Sound, are usually dated to 1668 and became counties in their own right in 1739. Settlement then moved west, with the mountain counties split off last: Buncombe (1791) once covered the whole western end of the state and was divided repeatedly into Haywood, Macon, Yancey, Henderson, Madison, Jackson, Transylvania, Swain and Mitchell. The count reached 100 in 1911 with Avery and Hoke counties, and the General Assembly has left it there since.

North Carolina counties are run by elected boards of commissioners and are responsible for schools, public health, social services and land records; they are more powerful than in New England but weaker than in the Midwest, since cities handle their own police and utilities. The whole state is on Eastern Time.

All 100 counties of North Carolina

Five county facts

• Largest by area: by total area, Dare County (Manteo), about 1,560 square miles, but most of that is Pamlico and Albemarle sounds; its land is about 380 square miles along the Outer Banks. By land, Robeson County (Lumberton) at about 950 square miles just beats Sampson County (Clinton).
• Smallest by area: Chowan County, seat Edenton, about 170 square miles of land on the north shore of Albemarle Sound — one of the four original precincts. Clay County (Hayesville) in the far west is the smallest mountain county.
• Most populous: Wake County, with about 1,129,000 people in 2020, and Mecklenburg County with about 1,115,000; Guilford (Greensboro) is third at about 541,000. Wake overtook Mecklenburg between the 2010 and 2020 censuses.
• Least populous: Tyrrell County, seat Columbia, with about 3,200 people on the low peninsula between Albemarle Sound and the Alligator River. Hyde County (Swan Quarter), which includes Ocracoke Island, and Graham County (Robbinsville) in the Smokies are the only others under 10,000.
• Oldest and newest: Chowan, Currituck, Pasquotank and Perquimans (1668 as precincts) are the oldest. Avery County, created in 1911 a few days after Hoke County, was the 100th and last. North Carolina has no independent cities.

Reading the map

Press Streets and zoom in on the highlighted state to see county lines. The state falls into three bands. The mountain counties west of the Blue Ridge — Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Swain, Macon, Jackson, Haywood, Transylvania, Buncombe (Asheville), Madison, Yancey, Mitchell, Avery, Watauga, Ashe and Alleghany — border Tennessee along the crest of the Appalachians, and Yancey County holds Mount Mitchell, the highest point east of the Mississippi. The Piedmont counties in the middle are the industrial and university belt. The coastal plain counties are large, flat and drained by the Roanoke, Tar, Neuse and Cape Fear rivers; Dare, Hyde and Carteret counties take in the Outer Banks and Cape Hatteras, and Brunswick and New Hanover (Wilmington) face the Atlantic at the South Carolina line.

Related maps

• North Carolina map — cities, borders and geography.
• Blank North Carolina map and printable North Carolina map.
• Raleigh, the state capital, in Wake County; Charlotte, the largest city, in Mecklenburg County.
• Neighbouring county maps: Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina.
• South Atlantic division · the South · Southeast region · Eastern Time Zone.
• Geography: Appalachian Mountains, US coastlines, state high points.
• All US county maps.