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[NWI_Irish96]

Have an idea for splitting/merging counties, cities or towns? Post them here.

Specific ideas:

1) Split Cook County, Illinois into three areas. One would be a standalone city/county consisting of exactly the city limits of Chicago (a la Indianapolis, Nashville, etc.). The other two would be the rest of the county, split roughly by North Avenue, with the entirety of Melrose Park with the southern part and the entirety of North lake with the northern part. (Yes, the northern county would have three disconnected segments.)

Rationale: Chicago is plenty large enough to not need separate city and county governments, and the current county government has too much power as it is.

2) Reconfigure Clark and Floyd counties, including a merger of Jeffersonville, Clarksville and New Albany. Specifically, all of Jeffersonville Township, the parts of Utica and Silver Creek townships that are currently part of Jeffersonville or Clarksville, and all of New Albany township become part of a reorganized Clark county and the new city of Falls City. The rest of both counties become part of the reorganized Floyd County.

Rationale: Individually, none of Jeffersonville, Clarksville or New Albany is over 50,000, but the merged city would be over 100,000 and be much more recognizable statewide.

General ideas:

3) In states like Indiana, where Townships are holdovers from the days when it took too long to get to the county seat by horse, they are now essentially a worthless level of government that wastes tax dollars. Get rid of them. I understand that in many states, Townships serve more of a purpose so I'm not advocating it in those cases.

4) Any county that both has a population < 50,000 and a size of < 500 square miles should merge with another county. There is a redundancy in county level services and a waste of tax dollars.

[Max Rockatansky]

Split northern San Bernardino County into Needles County or maybe Mojave County?  I would probably CA 58, I-15 CA 247 and CA 62 as the rough boundary for the new county.  I would possibly put the communities in San Bernardino County along CA 62 into Riverside County or add another county based around Coachella Valley.

[gonealookin]

It has been discussed in the Lake Tahoe area.  Washoe County, Carson City and Douglas County all touch the lake and have valley areas, separated by a ridge which varies from about 7100 feet to over 10,000 feet elevation.  There's no real commonality between lake and valley sections, either economically or sociologically.  So the lake portions have proposed secession and merger as a single "Lake Tahoe County" in Nevada.

It's not a realistic proposal because a lot of visitor tax money flows over that ridge from the lake down into the valley, and the valley sections are much more populous and would never give up that source of revenue.

4) Any county that both has a population < 50,000 and a size of < 500 square miles should merge with another county. There is a redundancy in county level services and a waste of tax dollars.

We do this to some extent with certain services that are pooled among several Nevada counties.  For example, Carson City Health and Human Services (think restaurant inspections in particular but they played a big role in the Covid response) serves not just Carson City but also Storey, Lyon and Douglas counties.

[Big John]

Split Fulton County GA into 3 counties.  It has 3 distinct different purposes.

[skluth]

The counties of So Cal would probably be much different if they were designed to make more sense. The desert regions are all quite different from the coastal communities which are different from the agriculture communities. The Inland Empire is different from all the above.

Riverside (where I live) should be divided into three counties; everything west of the Badlands, San Gorgonio Pass and Coachella Valley, and everything from Chiriaco Summit east. The first two would be their own counties, while the east end would be combined with Imperial County. Imperial County would add the eastern parts of both Riverside and San Bernardino Counties so the entire Colorado River Basin would be in one county. The Mojave Desert parts of San Bernardino and LA Counties (essentially everything north of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains) would be a new county which might also include the bit of Kern County SE of the Tehachapi Mountains. The area around Yucca Valley-Joshua Tree could pick which of the three surrounding counties (its current county of San Bernardino or one of two new counties which I'll dub Coachella and Mojave) or possibly yet another new county (Joshua Tree with a county seat at Yucca Valley). The expanded Imperial County might also want to split at the Colorado Basin and Salton Sea Basin line; I'll call that county Colorado County. Not sure where the new county seats might be, possibly Indio (Coachella as there are already some county government branch offices there), Barstow (Mojave), and Blythe (Colorado).

[CNGL-Leudimin]

Agree on the California changes. At least split them along the NWS county warning area boundaries, in order to make easier for me to find them. Pinal County, Arizona and Cayuga County, New York would also need to be split so that my 122 state plan can happen .

[Scott5114]

Here is my plan to merge all of the counties in Oklahoma with a population of under 10,000. This results in 58 counties, down from the current 77. I think this is needed.



For deciding which county goes where, the main consideration was where the people in that county are probably doing their business now. For names, I just picked the one I like the best (although Greer won out over Kiowa and Harmon because historically much of that region was part of Greer County). The vast majority of changes are in the western half of the state; the only ones in the east are folding Coal into Atoka, Latimer into Pittsburg (and keeping Latimer as the name because we don't need a misspelled reference to Pittsburgh PA as a county name), and Nowata into Washington.

[Evan_Th]

Divide King County, WA, into three sections:  Seattle, East, and South.  Shoreline can either go with Seattle or go to Snohomish County.  Skykomish and the US 2 corridor around it also goes to Snohomish County, since it's not road-accessible from within King County.

Also, Camano Island moves from Island County to Snohomish County, because all access there except by private boat is from Snohomish County.

Finally, Jefferson County gets split along the crest of the Olympic Mountains, since there's absolutely no way except hiking trails to get from one part to the other.  The west (and much less-populous) section of the county can pick whether to join Clallam County (to the north) or Mason County (to the south).

[Bruce]

Consolidated some small counties in Washington, purely for aesthetics:



Wahkiakum - Absorbed into Pacific County
Island - Split between Jefferson (Whidbey) and Snohomish (Camano) counties
Jefferson - Western portion absorbed into Grays Harbor County
Skamania - Split between Cowlitz and Clark counties
Columbia - Absorbed into Garfield County
Ferry - Absorbed into Okanogan County (might split to give the Colville Reservation its own county-equivalent entity)
Stevens - Absorbed into Pend Oreille County

I'll come up with a more serious proposal later, once I have time to give some new counties some proper names. For starters, all counties named for slaveholders would have to be renamed.

[US 89]

Could swear I had posted this on here somewhere, but I guess not. This is my grand plan for Utah, which results in 39 counties - up from the current 29:



A lot of the changes on here are to adjust county lines to explicitly follow watershed drainage divides. Many of the existing northern Utah county lines do this already, but a lot of others across the state are kind of assumed to be along those divides but aren't. Most of the other changes are generally to split up extremely large counties into more manageable sizes, especially if there's population centers far from each other in them, and to bring back several counties that used to exist but were abolished by the Utah territorial legislature back in 1862. Also trying to minimize instances where parts of counties aren't accessible by road without dipping into other counties.

[Scott5114]

Is a Shambip when you are led to believe something is going to bip, but it reality it is ruined, meaning it pibs instead?

[webny99]

One thought I had: if the Town of Irondequoit merged with the City of Rochester, it would give the city a much more organic shape, and it would seem more like a true Great Lakes city instead of an inland city with a tiny strip connecting it to the lake. It would also add 51,043 to Rochester's population and bump it back to its rightful place as the 3rd largest city in NY, at least for another census or two.

[KCRoadFan]

Looking at my metro (KC area): how about the small inner-ring suburbs in northeast Johnson County (Westwood, Westwood Hills, Fairway, Mission Hills, Roeland Park) be absorbed into Mission?

Or, to take it a step further: all those aforementioned cities, along with Mission, Prairie Village, and Leawood, are absorbed into Overland Park. Merriam would be divided between Overland Park to the east of I-35 and Shawnee to the west - thus, JOCO is down to OP, Lenexa, Shawnee, and Olathe. I suppose Lenexa and Shawnee merge at some point as well, given their combined population is about 125K, compared to 139K for Olathe and 193K for Overland Park - although keep in mind those are based on figures for the current cities, and don’t include all the territory that would be annexed. But I’m just trying to give you the picture.

[Scott5114]

Looking at my metro (KC area): how about the small inner-ring suburbs in northeast Johnson County (Westwood, Westwood Hills, Fairway, Mission Hills, Roeland Park) be absorbed into Mission?

Or, to take it a step further: all those aforementioned cities, along with Mission, Prairie Village, and Leawood, are absorbed into Overland Park. Merriam would be divided between Overland Park to the east of I-35 and Shawnee to the west - thus, JOCO is down to OP, Lenexa, Shawnee, and Olathe. I suppose Lenexa and Shawnee merge at some point as well, given their combined population is about 125K, compared to 139K for Olathe and 193K for Overland Park - although keep in mind those are based on figures for the current cities, and don’t include all the territory that would be annexed. But I’m just trying to give you the picture.

You're gonna merge all that stuff, and not name after it the mythical (but strangely elusive in actual reality) "Shawnee Mission, KS"?

[SectorZ]

Massachusetts...

Move Ashby and Townsend from Middlesex to Worcester county to remove the odd overhang over Worcester County. They align more with Worcester County anyway.

[1]

I've always wondered what Delaware would look like with New England-style towns, but I can't do it myself since I don't know much about Delaware.

[NWI_Irish96]

I don't have a fancy map to show, but I would merge the following pairs of counties in Indiana:

Switzerland and Ohio
Fayette and Union
Warren and Benton
Daviess and Martin
Crawford and Perry
Blackford and Jay

[paulthemapguy]

I like the idea of rounding Illinois off to an even 100 counties =)

That would require two mergers, as Illinois currently has 102 counties.  I would nominate some of the smallest counties to get absorbed into another county.  Marshall can absorb Putnam, Hardin can merge with Gallatin or Pope.  Maybe Stark can get appended to another county?

I'll be amazed if I'm the only one who thinks of splitting Kossuth County, Iowa in two.  It takes up two spots on the apparent grid formed by the counties of upstate Iowa.  Plus, that takes Iowa's county total from 99 to an even 100.

[NWI_Irish96]

I like the idea of rounding Illinois off to an even 100 counties =)

That would require two mergers, as Illinois currently has 100 counties.  I would nominate some of the smallest counties to get absorbed into another county.  Marshall can absorb Putnam, Hardin can merge with Gallatin or Pope.  Maybe Stark can get appended to another county?

I'll be amazed if I'm the only one who thinks of splitting Kossuth County, Iowa in two.  It takes up two spots on the apparent grid formed by the counties of upstate Iowa.  Plus, that takes Iowa's county total from 99 to an even 100.

You have a typo there. Illinois currently has 102 counties.

[SectorZ]

Here is my plan to merge all of the counties in Oklahoma with a population of under 10,000. This results in 58 counties, down from the current 77. I think this is needed.



For deciding which county goes where, the main consideration was where the people in that county are probably doing their business now. For names, I just picked the one I like the best (although Greer won out over Kiowa and Harmon because historically much of that region was part of Greer County). The vast majority of changes are in the western half of the state; the only ones in the east are folding Coal into Atoka, Latimer into Pittsburg (and keeping Latimer as the name because we don't need a misspelled reference to Pittsburgh PA as a county name), and Nowata into Washington.

I was disappointed in the cleanliness of Craig County on this map.

[Scott5114]

I was disappointed in the cleanliness of Craig County on this map.

Blame the mob-rule people, not me

(At one point, I actually had the font the mob-rule maps used, and could therefore make fake mob-rule style maps at my leisure. Unfortunately, it seems to have gone missing from my system, and I don't remember the exact name of it to track it down again.)

[Road Hog]

All the cities in Pulaski County, AR should merge into Little Rock to reflect the size and influence of what the Little Rock area actually is, but it will never happen because of politics.

For that matter, some of the cities in NWA should merge as well. As fast as the region's growing, I still think it's held back by the absence of a single dominant city. Fayetteville grew more than I expected in the last census but it's still largely landlocked by Springdale, Johnson, Farmington, Elkins, Greenland and the mountains to the south, although there seems to be a decent corridor to the west toward Wedington and Siloam Springs open.

Springdale has more room to expand and will most likely be the second-largest city in the state by the 2030 census, but it too will eventually be hemmed-in by other cities and Beaver Lake.

[epzik8]

Merge Baltimore city back into Baltimore County

[CNGL-Leudimin]

Agree on the California changes. At least split them along the NWS county warning area boundaries, in order to make easier for me to find them. Pinal County, Arizona and Cayuga County, New York would also need to be split so that my 122 state plan can happen .

And Monroe County, Florida. Didn't remember the mainland section isn't in the same county warning area as the Keys.

I was disappointed in the cleanliness of Craig County on this map.

It's correct ever since the craIG county sign was replaced.

[DandyDan]

I like the idea of rounding Illinois off to an even 100 counties =)

That would require two mergers, as Illinois currently has 100 counties.  I would nominate some of the smallest counties to get absorbed into another county.  Marshall can absorb Putnam, Hardin can merge with Gallatin or Pope.  Maybe Stark can get appended to another county?

I'll be amazed if I'm the only one who thinks of splitting Kossuth County, Iowa in two.  It takes up two spots on the apparent grid formed by the counties of upstate Iowa.  Plus, that takes Iowa's county total from 99 to an even 100.

At two different points in Iowa history, it was its own county. It was Bancroft County in the 1850's and Crocker County after the Civil War. Much of it is swampland unsuitable for farming, which is why it got merged into Kossuth County.
https://who13.com/news/what-ever-happened-to-iowas-100th-county/