US Counties
🌐

US Counties

Quest Hashtag
#GoQuesting1640
Location
USA
Theme
Political Subdivisions
Geographic Scope
National
Quest Size
Enormous (500+)
Type
Every

This quest involves visiting all of the counties (and county-equivalents) in the US.

There are very few quests that require you to visit so many areas of the US as this one. Even if you have no intention of completing all of the objectives, adopting this quest will help you get to less-traveled areas of the country.

NOTE → If you’re just interested in visiting the counties in a particular state, then check out this directory of county quests organized by state instead. State (or regional) county quests are a great way to get started.

📍
3143 objectives
🗺️
Across the USA
📱
Not yet supported

Quest Objectives

What Qualifies (?)

Simply passing through a county (except via commercial airline) counts for marking it off.

List of Objectives

There are currently 3,143 objectives, so I won’t list them here. Scroll down to the Tips and Resources section for links to county lists and counting tools.

Milestones or Smaller Quests

There are many possible sub-quests you could complete. The most obvious ones are focused at the state level, or perhaps completing entire regions (such as New England or the Deep South). Another is focused on geography: all the counties that border the Pacific Ocean, or the Gulf Coast, or Lake Michigan, or the Mississippi River.

There are also a number of possible milestones, including setting a minimum number or percentage for each state, or for aiming for a particular overall number or percentage, or both. Some questers also have state-related county goals.

Common milestones:

  • 1000 counties
  • 50% of all counties
  • Each state at least 50% complete

Connect with fellow questers!

Be sure to add #GoQuesting1640 when you post about this quest on social media or a blog so other questers can find you.

Want to connect with others working on this same quest? Click these links to automatically search for this quest on each network (pro tip: save this search for next time!):

Quest Finishers

Fellow Questers

Related Quests

🌐
Counties (In Your State)
🌐
Counties named Washington

Tips and Resources

  • Mob-Rule.com is the best place to keep track of your county visits. You can request a free account from the site owner via email. The site offers several useful features for counting counties, including an auto-generated gif of your county travels, an overlay of your visited counties on a google map, and even a tool for seeing which counties a driving route will include.
    • On your user page, clicking the map on the top right will open a larger .gif showing your progress. It’s an incredibly easy way to grab a quick image of your completion status.
    • The driving route tool is incredibly useful, but also a bit finicky. Sometimes if it can’t find a waypoint, it simply deletes it without warning, which messes up your route. I suggest using only a handful of waypoints for each leg of your route so it’s easier to see when this happens. It also uses Google’s recommended route as its default, which provides a useful guide but is likely not accurate for all trips. For fine-tuning of your actual route, you can also add “dummy” waypoints and then drag them to the appropriate spots to reroute. Once your route is accurate, click the analysis button to see a listing of the counties the route passes through. You can enter your new waypoints on this screen and click re-analyze
    • Another great tool is the overlay of counties on a google map. Not only will this allow you to zoom in to see much more detail, but it displays your visit status to boot! Be sure to relaunch the site after you make any additions to your visit totals, as the visit status is only updated when the page is initially loaded.
    • You can also quickly find a friend’s listing by replacing “USERNAME” in the following url with their username: https://www.mob-rule.com/user/USERNAME
    • Use the legend option to change the color of your visited counties (you can use multiple colors to delineate different things, such as counties you slept in, completed a certain activity, etc)
    • You can download a text-version of your county lists (important: always back up your quest data!) by inserting your username in place of “USERNAME” in this url: http://www.mob-rule.com/show/USERNAME/all and saving the resulting data.
  • The Extra Miler Club is designed for those who are intentionally visiting counties, and even hosts an annual meeting. They also sell inexpensive maps of the US and state sets showing all counties. Membership requires annual dues. EMC also hosts an active Facebook group.
  • If you just want a quick list of counties, this Wikipedia page is a good resource.
  • Not sure what county you’re currently in? The free Locate.me (iOS only) is a quick and easy way to find out.
  • This animated visualization on the history of counties is interesting.
  • Twelve Mile Circle has an interesting series of posts on the smallest county (see additional links at bottom of the post).

Submit an Update

#GoQuesting relies on the Questing Community—that’s YOU!—to maintain and improve these quest pages.

  • Updates to the list of objectives
  • Add a resource or tip
  • Add yourself as a quest finisher
  • Add yourself as a quester
  • Something else

Please submit any suggested updates using these forms. Thank you! 🙏