List of counties in Rhode Island
Wikimedia list article
There are five counties in the U.S. state of Rhode Island. Rhode Island is tied with Hawaii for having the second-fewest counties of any U.S. state (only Delaware has fewer, with three counties). Although Rhode Island is divided into counties, it does not have any local government at the county level. Instead, local governance is provided by the eight cities and thirty-one towns. Counties in Rhode Island have had no governmental functions since 1846 other than as court administrative and sheriff corrections boundaries which are part of state government.
Within Rhode Island, Washington County is colloquially referred to as South County.
The colony of Rhode Island was established in the 17th century. It was the first of the thirteen original American colonies to declare independence from British rule in 1776, during the American Revolution, and the last to ratify the Constitution. The counties were all established before the Declaration of Independence.
The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) code, which is used by the United States government to uniquely identify states and counties, is provided with each entry.
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This entry incorporates text from “List of counties in Rhode Island” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.