List of counties in Texas


The U.S. state of Texas is divided into 254 counties, more than any other U.S. state. While only about 20% of Texas counties are generally located within the Houston—Dallas—San Antonio—Austin areas, they serve a majority of the state's population with approximately 22,000,000 inhabitants.
Texas was originally divided into municipalities, a unit of local government under Spanish and Mexican rule. When the Republic of Texas gained its independence in 1836, the 23 municipalities became the original Texas counties. Many of these were later divided into new counties. The last county to be initially created was Kenedy County in 1921, but Loving County is the newest organized county; it was first organized in 1893 in an apparent scheme to defraud, abolished in 1897, then reorganized in 1931. Most of these recent counties, especially near the northwest, were created from Bexar County during the 1870s.
Each county is run by a commissioners' court, consisting of four elected commissioners and a county judge elected from all the voters of the county. In smaller counties, the county judge actually does perform judicial duties, but in larger counties, the county judge functions as the county's chief executive officer. Certain officials, such as the sheriff and tax collector, are elected separately by the voters, but the commissioners' court determines their office budgets, and sets overall county policy. All county elections are partisan; the one exception is the board of trustees of the Dallas County department of education.
While the counties have eminent domain power and control all unincorporated land within their boundaries, they have neither home-rule authority nor zoning power. The county is responsible for providing essential services. Unlike other US states, Texas does not allow for consolidated city-county governments. Cities and counties are permitted to enter "interlocal agreements" to share services. School districts are independent of county and city government.
The Federal Information Processing Standard code, which is used by the United States government to uniquely identify states and counties, is provided with each entry. Texas' code is 48, which when combined with any county code would be written in the form of 48XXX. The FIPS code for each county in the table links to census data for that county.

List

Racial / Ethnic Profile of counties in Texas (2020 Census)

Racial / Ethnic Profile of counties in Texas --
Following is a table of counties in Texas. Data for the United States and the state of Texas has been included for comparison purposes.
The majority racial/ethnic group is coded per the key below.

Defunct counties

There have been at least thirty-two counties established by Texas law that no longer exist. These fall into five categories: judicial counties; counties established by the Constitutional Convention of 1868–69; counties never organized which were abolished by legislative act; counties whose territory is no longer considered part of the state; and counties whose names have been changed.