Washington Counties
Complete list of all 39 counties in Washington with population, area, median income, and county seats — plus a free printable blank map.
Labeled outline map of Washington counties. Download a printable version in SVG, PNG, or PDF.
All 39 Washington counties
| County | County Seat | Population ▼ | Area | Median Income | Cities |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| King | — | 2,298,714 | 2,116 mi² | $131,803 | 32 |
| Pierce | — | 922,424 | 1,670 mi² | $100,623 | 34 |
| Snohomish | — | 841,433 | 2,087 mi² | $115,712 | 21 |
| Spokane | — | 558,641 | 1,764 mi² | $81,647 | 25 |
| Clark | — | 515,787 | 629 mi² | $100,418 | 10 |
| Thurston | — | 297,238 | 722 mi² | $97,203 | 10 |
| Kitsap | — | 277,633 | 395 mi² | $107,690 | 20 |
| Yakima | — | 235,282 | 4,295 mi² | $71,171 | 18 |
| Benton | — | 234,788 | 1,700 mi² | $88,512 | 8 |
| Whatcom | — | 228,909 | 2,107 mi² | $82,792 | 14 |
| Skagit | — | 132,684 | 1,731 mi² | $88,798 | 12 |
| Cowlitz | — | 116,840 | 1,140 mi² | $78,268 | 10 |
| Franklin | — | 98,034 | 1,242 mi² | $87,316 | 5 |
| Grant | — | 97,918 | 2,680 mi² | $73,343 | 14 |
| Lewis | — | 86,887 | 2,403 mi² | $76,295 | 23 |
How many counties does Washington have?
Washington has 39 counties covering 66,456 square miles and roughly 7,816,021 residents. The state was admitted to the Union in 1889 as the 42nd state, and the current county boundaries reflect more than a century of administrative subdivision.
The largest county by land area is Okanogan County at 5,268 square miles, home to about 43,864 residents. The most populous is King County with approximately 2,298,714 residents — a density of about 1,086 people per square mile.
At the other end of the scale, Garfield County has only about 2,512 residents.
Washington’s capital is Olympia, while the largest city is Seattle — a common pattern in the United States, where many states placed their capitals in smaller, more central towns rather than their largest commercial hubs.
Related resources
Download a printable outline of Washington’s county boundaries from our blank map of Washington page — available in SVG, PNG, and PDF.
Use the What County Am I In? tool to detect which Washington county a GPS location or address falls in, or the Address to County Lookup for batch input.
For demographic radius analysis, the Find ZIP Codes in Radius and Population Within Radius tools let you draw a circle around any Washington address and see every ZIP code and the total population inside.
Two SimpleMapLab studies cover Washington specifically: the 100-mile radius around Olympia measures how much of the state lives within 100 miles of its capitol, and the loneliest town in Washington ranks the state’s most isolated inhabited place. The county-counts blog post puts Washington’s 39 counties in national context.
Frequently asked questions
Population and demographics are aggregated from ZIP-code-level US Census data via the SimpleMaps dataset. Countiesboundaries are from the US Atlas TopoJSON build of the Census Bureau’s TIGER/Line shapefiles. Land area is from the Census Gazetteer. State counts follow the US Census Bureau’s definition of counties and county-equivalents (50 states + DC = 3,143). All sources are public domain.