List of counties in Connecticut


There are eight counties in the U.S. state of Connecticut.
Four of the counties – Fairfield, Hartford, New Haven and New London – were created in 1666, shortly after the Connecticut Colony and the New Haven Colony combined. Windham and Litchfield Counties were created later in the colonial era, while Middlesex and Tolland Counties were created after American independence. Six of the counties are named for locations in England, where many early Connecticut settlers originated.
Although Connecticut is divided into counties, there is no county government in Connecticut, and local government consists solely on the municipality level. Almost all functions of county government were abolished in Connecticut in 1960, except for elected County Sheriffs and their departments under them. Those offices and their departments were abolished by an act of the state legislature effective in December 2000. The functions the County Sheriffs' Departments played were assumed by the newly organized State Marshal Commission and the state Department of Corrections.
Connecticut's legacy county names remain for geographical purposes. Geographic boundaries of the former counties are still used by the state to organize its judicial and state marshal system. Connecticut's court jurisdictions still adhere to the county boundaries, and Fairfield, Hartford and New Haven Counties have been further subdivided into several smaller jurisdictions.

Alphabetical listing

Former counties