Massachusetts County Map: All 14 Counties

Throughout New England, the traditional primary unit of local democracy has always been the incorporated town, which provides local police, fire, public education, water, sewage, and zoning. Massachusetts counties historically held narrow duties: county jails, registries of deeds, courthouses, and regional agricultural schools.

By the mid-1990s, chronic mismanagement, structural budget deficits, and the 1996 fiscal insolvency of Middlesex County prompted the Massachusetts General Court to enact Chapter 48 of the Acts of 1997 and Chapter 300 of the Acts of 1998. The state abolished county governments in Middlesex, Hampden, Worcester, Hampshire, Essex, Berkshire, Franklin, and Suffolk.

County sheriffs and registries of deeds became direct employees and agencies of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Courthouses were transferred to the state Trial Court. Today, while all 14 counties remain geographic entities for census, judicial district, and registry boundaries, only Barnstable, Bristol, Dukes, Norfolk, and Plymouth retain functioning county administrations.

Eastern Massachusetts is anchored by Suffolk County (Boston, Revere, Chelsea, Winthrop) and the inner-ring suburban giants of Middlesex, Essex, and Norfolk. Middlesex County alone holds over 1.6 million residents—more populous than eleven entire U.S. states—and anchors the Route 128 technological innovation corridor.

Southeastern Massachusetts comprises the coastal maritime counties of Plymouth (settled by Pilgrims in 1620), Bristol (Fall River and New Bedford textile and whaling ports), and Barnstable, which encompasses all 15 towns of Cape Cod organized under the Barnstable County Regional Assembly of Delegates.

Western Massachusetts rises through the fertile Connecticut River Valley (Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin counties) into the Berkshire Hills (Berkshire County), known for dairy farming, paper mills along the Housatonic, and world-class summer cultural institutions like Tanglewood.