FIPS county code

The FIPS county code is a five-digit Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) code ( [http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/fip6-4.htm FIPS 6-4] ) which uniquely identifies counties and county equivalents in the United States, certain U.S. possessions, and certain freely associated states. The first two digits are the FIPS state code and the last three are the county code within the state or possession.

County FIPS codes in the United States are usually (with a few exceptions) in the same sequence as alphabetized county names within the state. They are usually (but not always) odd numbers, so that new or changed county names can be fit in their alphabetical sequence slot.

The box below shows the list of counties for the U.S. which have County FIPS codes included in each list. Note that each county is only shown with the 3-digit code unique for that state; for the number to be unique throughout the United States, it requires it be a five digit number, i.e. the three digit code for that county in that state, prefixed with the two digit state number.

Lists of state and county FIPS codes for the United States can also be found at
* http://www.epa.gov/enviro/html/codes/state.html
* http://www.census.gov/geo/www/fips/fips65/download.html
* http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/baseacres/Data/counties.xls, a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

See also Counties of the United States