DOI: 10.3886/e239081v1
title: HIFLD OPEN County Subdivisions

description: County Subdivisions are the primary divisions of counties and equivalent entities. They include census county divisions, census subareas, minor civil divisions, and unorganized territories, and can be classified as either legal or statistical. Legal entities are termed minor civil divisions and statistical entities can be either census county divisions, census subareas, or unorganized territories.Minor Civil Divisions (MCDs) are the primary governmental or administrative divisions of a county in many states (parishes in Louisiana) and of the county equivalents in Puerto Rico and the Island Areas. MCDs in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Island Areas represent many different kinds of legal entities with a wide variety of governmental and/or administrative functions. MCDs include areas variously designated as barrios, barrios-pueblo, boroughs, charter townships, commissioner districts, election districts, election precincts, gores, grants, locations, magisterial districts, parish governing authority districts, plantations, purchases, reservations, supervisor's districts, towns, and townships. The Census Bureau recognizes MCDs in 29 states, Puerto Rico, and the Island Areas. The District of Columbia has no primary divisions, and is considered equivalent to an MCD for statistical purposes.In some states, all or some incorporated places are not part of any MCD; these places are termed independent places. In nine states-Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Wisconsin-all incorporated places are independent places. In other states, incorporated places are part of, or dependent within, the MCDs in which they are located, or the pattern is mixed-some incorporated places are independent of MCDs and others are included within one or more MCDs.In New York and Maine, American Indian reservations (AIRs) generally exist outside the jurisdiction of any town (MCD) and thus also serve as the equivalent of MCDs for purposes of data presentation.In states with legal MCDs, the Census Bureau assigns a default FIPS county subdivision code of 00000 and ANSI code of eight zeroes in some coastal, territorial sea, and Great Lakes water where county subdivisions do not extend into the Great Lakes or out to the three-mile limit.Census County Divisions (CCDs) are areas delineated by the Census Bureau in cooperation with state, tribal, and local officials for statistical purposes. CCDs have no legal function and are not governmental units. CCD boundaries usually follow visible features and usually coincide with census tract boundaries. The name of each CCD is based on a place, county, or well-known local name that identifies its location.Census Subareas are statistical subdivisions of boroughs, city and boroughs, municipalities, and census areas, the statistical equivalent entities for counties in Alaska. The state of Alaska and the Census Bureau cooperatively delineate the census subareas to serve as the statistical equivalents of MCDs.Unorganized Territories (UTs) are defined by the Census Bureau in nine MCD states where portions of counties or equivalent entities are not included in any legally established MCD or incorporated place. The Census Bureau recognizes such separate pieces of territory as one or more separate county subdivisions for census purposes. It assigns each unorganized territory a descriptive name, followed by the designation "UT".
description: Archived from the HIFLD Open GIS data repository, which was deactivated on August 26, 2025.<br>