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Collecting Counties: Some General Tips
For information on specific, difficult counties go to this LINK
Collecting Counties is a fast-growing hobby among people who like to keep lists of all the counties they have visited. One nice thing about this collection, is that you don't take anything home with you to be stored. All you need is a printed list of all the counties in the USA, with a tick mark next to each one you have visited. Most collectors make their own rules, but generally, you can count any county in which you've been on the ground (in or out of a vehicle) within the county. Just driving to the county line and making a U-turn to continue your trip is sufficient.
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The boundaries of counties are usually signposted on major highways, and sometimes on minor ones. But you can never depend on this. You may have to do some detective work to determine if you have actually crossed a county line or not. If you're heading off your route to go to a county line, estimate the distance from some mapped feature, and use your odometer to estimate where the line should be.
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In most cases, it's pretty easy to find a way into any county. An ordinary road atlas will make it clear where to exit north from I-80 to get into Shelby, Audubon and Guthrie Counties, in Iowa. The list below shows the easier access to some that are not so obvious, and is based on my own experiences, or scrutiny of detailed on-line maps, such as MapQuest.
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First, a comment about county lines. They're not always marked by official or unofficial signs. Look for clues:
1--Changes in road surface characteristics. In back country, counties often have different road maintanance policies.
2--Mailbox numbers. Mailboxes often have house numbers on them. Adjacent houses will have very dissimilar numbers if they are in different counties. Generally numbers will ascent as you approach a county line, then suddenly change and descend as you continue toward the center of the next county.
3--Rural road names. If you pass a crossroad named Road 100 and the next one is called 270 Street, or Hollyhock Road, you've probably just crossed a county line.
4--Semi-official signs. They may say something like "Zoning permit required", or "Soil conservation district". Or, when near a county line, look back at the signs facing the other way, for indicators of entering the county you are leaving.*****
Section Line roads. These are found in midwestern states where the land is divided into "sections"---perfect square miles, laid out like checkerboards, with north-south and east-west lines at exact one-mile intervals. These lines are usually roads, but are sometimes rutty two-tracks and occasionally just hedge-rows, and often do not cross streams. They are almost universal in IA, KS, OK, NE, SD, ND, and adjacent parts of other states. If you're driving a highway that runs parallel to a county line a mile or two away, just turn down any section-line road and drive to the county line. You can't get lost. But be careful if the road is wet and not gravelled.*****
A note about "county line roads". The county line does not necessarily run down the center line of such roads. The entire road and right-of-way may be on one side of the county line or the other. Always a good idea to stop or turn off and go past the right-of-way line on the side of the road in question.*****
And, consider ferries to visit counties along the Ohio or Mississippi Rivers. Leave your car on one side and go over and back as a foot passenger, where there is no convenient way to drive across. (See my Ferry website.)
Some counties can be visited without actually crossing the Mississippi River. The river has changed course since the state lines were enacted, so there are many enclaves on the "wrong" side of the river. A number of these have been noted in my Difficult Counties website for AR, IL, KY, LA, MS and TN. These are usually accessible only by poor farm roads along the river bottoms, so in cases where a detailed route description is not given, it is recommended that you use a site like MapQuest to determine how to get there. I have mentioned only the river counties where there is no bridge crossing within that county.*****
A few notes about specific listing problems.
In Louisiana, they are called "Parishes", but they are just counties with a different name.
In Virginia, about 40 cities have special status, in that they are not within any counties, but are instead "independent cities". As such, they are thought of as "county equivalents", and most collectors collect them as though they were also counties.
Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Ialand no longer attach any administrative significance to counties, but their historical counties can still be found on maps and lists, and can be collected as though they still existed.
Alaska is divided into "boroughs", which (like counties) have fixed borders and administrative function, and "census areas", which do not.
Canada's provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island are also subdivided into counties, which are as easy to collect as those in US states. Other Canadian provinces have bewildering systems of administrative subdivision, and it can be exasperating to even find a list of them, much less their borders.
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