List of Counties in Georgia (U.S. State) - History

History

Georgia has the second largest number of counties of any state in the United States, following the State of Texas, which has 254 counties (see List of counties in Texas). One traditional reasoning for the creation and location of so many counties in Georgia was that a country farmer, rancher, or lumberman, should be able to travel to the legal county seat town or city, and then back home, in one day on horseback or via wagon. However, about 25 counties in Georgia were created in the first quarter of the 20th century, after the use of the railroad, automobile, truck, and bus had become possible. These 25 or so counties are generally thought of as having been created because of political reasons. The last new county to be established in Georgia was Peach County, established in 1924.

The proliferation of counties in Georgia led to multiple state constitutional amendments attempting to establish a limit on the number of counties in the state. The most recent such amendment, ratified in 1945, limited the number to 159 counties, although there had been 161 counties from 1924 to 1931. In a very rare consolidation of counties, both Campbell County and Milton County were annexed into Fulton County in 1932 as a financial move during the Great Depression, since those two county governments were nearly bankrupt.

Fulton County contains Atlanta, and it was thought that tax revenues from Atlanta and its suburbs would help to support the rural areas of the discarded counties, which had very little tax income of their own—mostly from property taxes on farms and forests, which did not amount to much.