Rhode Island county map

Counties without governments

Rhode Island abolished county government in 1846, earlier than any other state, and has never revived it. There are no county commissioners, county sheriffs’ departments, county roads or county taxes. What remain are the five county names, used for the state’s superior court districts, for land records, and by the Census Bureau, which still reports population by county. Every function that a county would handle elsewhere belongs either to the state or to one of Rhode Island’s 39 municipalities, eight of which are cities and 31 towns. The “seats” in the table are the historic ones where the county courthouses stood; they carry no administrative meaning today.

The colony organised its first three counties in 1703: Providence, Newport and Kings County, which covered the western shore of Narragansett Bay. Kings was renamed Washington in 1781 after the Revolution — the same year that Rhode Island dropped other royal names. Bristol County was created in 1747, when the towns of Bristol, Warren and Barrington were transferred from Massachusetts after a long boundary dispute, and Kent County was set off from Providence in 1750. There has been no change since.

The five counties are very different in size. Providence County, which contains the capital, Pawtucket, Cranston and the Blackstone Valley mill towns, holds about six in ten Rhode Islanders. Newport County covers Aquidneck Island, Jamestown (Conanicut Island) and the Sakonnet towns of Tiverton and Little Compton on the east side of the bay; Block Island, the town of New Shoreham, belongs to Washington County even though it lies ten miles out at sea.

All 5 counties of Rhode Island

Five county facts

• Largest by area: Providence County, about 410 square miles of land, stretching from the Connecticut line to the head of Narragansett Bay. Washington County (“South County” to locals) is a close second at about 330 square miles plus Block Island.
• Smallest by area: Bristol County, about 24 square miles of land on the peninsula between the Providence River and Mount Hope Bay. Only three US counties are smaller by land area.
• Most populous: Providence County, with about 660,000 people in 2020 out of the state’s 1,097,379 — the city of Providence alone has about 191,000.
• Least populous: Bristol County, with about 51,000 people in the three towns of Barrington, Warren and Bristol. Newport County has about 86,000.
• Oldest and newest: Providence, Newport and Washington (as Kings) date from 1703; Kent, created in 1750, is the newest. Rhode Island has no independent cities and, since 1846, no county governments at all — a distinction it shares with neighbouring Connecticut, which abolished its county governments in 1960.

Reading the map

Press Streets and zoom in on the highlighted state to see the county lines, which mostly follow town boundaries and the shores of Narragansett Bay. The bay splits the state in three: Providence and Kent counties on the mainland west of it, Bristol County on its eastern peninsula, and Newport County on the islands and the far eastern shore. Washington County fills the south-western corner along the Atlantic beaches from Westerly to Narragansett. The whole state is 1,545 square miles, so even the largest county is smaller than many single counties in the West. Rhode Island lies in the Eastern Time Zone.

Related maps

• Rhode Island map — cities, borders and geography.
• Blank Rhode Island map and printable Rhode Island map.
• Providence, the state capital and seat of Providence County.
• Neighbouring county maps: Massachusetts, Connecticut.
• New England · the Northeast · Eastern Time Zone.
• Geography: US coastlines, Appalachian Mountains.
• All US county maps.