Massachusetts contains the administrative territorial entity Franklin County
Cities, towns, and counties
There are 50 cities and 301 towns in Massachusetts, grouped into 14 counties. The fourteen counties, moving roughly from west to east, are Berkshire, Franklin, Hampshire, Hampden, Worcester, Middlesex, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Bristol, Plymouth, Barnstable, Dukes, and Nantucket. Eleven communities which call themselves "towns" are, by law, cities since they have traded the town meeting form of government for a mayor-council or manager-council form.Boston is the state capital in Massachusetts. The population of the city proper is 692,600, and Greater Boston, with a population of 4,873,019, is the 11th largest metropolitan area in the nation. Other cities with a population over 100,000 include Worcester, Springfield, Lowell, Cambridge, Brockton, Quincy, New Bedford, and Lynn. Plymouth is the largest municipality in the state by land area, followed by Middleborough.Massachusetts, along with the five other New England states, features the local governmental structure known as the New England town. In this structure, incorporated towns—as opposed to townships or counties—hold many of the responsibilities and powers of local government. Most of the county governments were abolished by the state of Massachusetts beginning in 1997 including Middlesex County, the largest county in the state by population. The voters of these now-defunct counties elect only Sheriffs and Registers of Deeds, who are part of the state government. Other counties have been reorganized, and a few still retain county councils.
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