South Carolina county map

How South Carolina’s counties are laid out

South Carolina’s 46 counties cover 32,020 square miles, an average of about 700 square miles each. The modern county map is younger than it looks. Colonial South Carolina was governed through parishes and, after 1769, seven judicial districts; the legislature created counties in 1785, abolished most of them in favour of districts again in 1800, and only under the constitution of 1868 were the districts renamed counties with elected governments. Several of the present names — Charleston, Beaufort, Georgetown, Colleton, Berkeley — go back to the 1680s as parishes or precincts, but as counties they are formally dated to 1785 or 1868.

Fourteen counties were carved out after 1868 as the cotton-mill towns of the Piedmont grew: Cherokee, Bamberg, Dorchester, Greenwood and Saluda in 1897, Lee in 1902, Calhoun in 1908, Dillon in 1910, Jasper in 1912, McCormick in 1916 and Allendale in 1919. The names honour statesmen (Calhoun, Pickens, Sumter, Marion, Laurens, Chester), British places (Lancaster, York, Chester, Chesterfield, Berkeley, Colleton), and the Cherokee, whose homeland was the north-western corner of the state.

Every county elects a county council; there are no independent cities and no consolidated city-counties. The state capital, Columbia, is the seat of Richland County and sits almost exactly at the geographic centre of the state, where the Broad and Saluda rivers join to form the Congaree.

All 46 counties of South Carolina

Five county facts

• Largest by area: Horry County, seat Conway, about 1,130 square miles of land along the Grand Strand from the North Carolina line to Georgetown County. Charleston County has a larger total area once its harbour, sounds and sea islands are counted.
• Smallest by area: McCormick County on the Savannah River, about 360 square miles of land, much of it in Sumter National Forest. Calhoun County near Columbia is only slightly larger.
• Most populous: Greenville County, seat Greenville, with about 525,000 people in 2020. Richland (Columbia), Charleston, Horry and Spartanburg counties follow, each above 325,000; the fast-growing Charleston suburbs of Berkeley and Dorchester counties are also among the ten largest.
• Least populous: Allendale County, seat Allendale, in the Savannah River lowlands, with about 8,000 people. McCormick and Calhoun counties are also below 15,000.
• Oldest and newest: the counties of the 1785 act — among them Charleston, Beaufort, Georgetown, Colleton, Lancaster, York and Chester — are the oldest names on the map. Allendale, cut from Barnwell and Hampton in 1919, is the newest. South Carolina has no independent cities.

Reading the map

Press Streets and zoom in on the highlighted state to see county lines. The map falls into three bands running from north-east to south-west. The Upstate counties of the Piedmont (Greenville, Spartanburg, Anderson, Pickens, Oconee) are small, hilly and densely settled along the I-85 corridor. The Midlands counties around Columbia straddle the fall line, where the sandy coastal plain begins. The Lowcountry counties along the coast — Horry, Georgetown, Charleston, Colleton, Beaufort and Jasper — are larger and fringed with sea islands and salt marsh. The Savannah River forms the entire western border, from Oconee County down to Jasper. The whole state keeps Eastern Time.

Related maps

• South Carolina map — cities, borders and geography.
• Blank South Carolina map and printable South Carolina map.
• Columbia, the state capital, in Richland County.
• Neighbouring county maps: North Carolina, Georgia.
• South Atlantic states · the Southeast · Eastern Time Zone.
• Geography: US coastlines, Appalachian Mountains, Major US rivers.
• All US county maps.