New Jersey County Map: All 21 Counties

The title originated in the seventeenth century during the provincial division of East and West Jersey under the Concessions and Agreements. Under colonial English common law, only landowners who held their property "free and clear" of feudal encumbrances (freeholders) were eligible to vote and hold civic office.

By the twenty-first century, civic leaders and civil rights advocates noted that the historic title was tied to an era when voting was restricted exclusively to white male property owners. In August 2020, Governor Phil Murphy signed Senate Bill 855 into law.

Effective January 1, 2021, all 21 county governing boards were formally retitled the "Board of County Commissioners" and members were designated "County Commissioners," standardizing New Jersey terminology with the rest of the nation.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an epidemic of municipal secession known as "Boroughitis" swept the state, particularly in Bergen County (which splintered into 70 distinct municipalities). Under the Faulkner Act, cities, towns, townships, boroughs, and villages maintain complete home-rule authority over zoning, local police departments, and school boards.

Consequently, New Jersey county government functions primarily as a regional utility and justice infrastructure: managing county roads and bridges, regional wastewater utilities, open space preservation trusts, county community colleges, and regional vocational-technical high schools.

Burlington County, the state's largest county by land area at 798 square miles, encompasses vast expanses of the federally protected New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve (Pine Barrens), preserving pristine pygmy pitch pine forests and cranberry bogs.