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a map of Virginia showing counties and independent cities
Virginia; independent cities, county subdivisions, magisterial districts and places. 1970. U.S. Census Bureau, 1971. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.

No County for Old Management: America’s Independent Cities

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When I first moved to Baltimore for college many years ago, I was almost immediately struck by something I frequently heard locals saying that I didn’t understand the need for: “Baltimore City.” In my ignorance I thought surely this was redundant, because what else could people possibly mean? Baltimore is a big city on the East Coast and everyone knows that! But soon, probably while filling out an official form for something and realizing I had more options than I thought, I got an important geography lesson. Baltimore City is in fact a very necessary distinction, because the city of Baltimore is surrounded on all sides (except at the waterfront) by Baltimore County, and they are completely separate administrative entities. It was then that I understood what another phrase meant that I frequently heard locals say, “the county.”  While Baltimoreans give the name of other Maryland counties when describing them, as I now know, if you hear them say “the county” they mean Baltimore County, their large neighbor to the immediate east, west, and north.

a map of Baltimore City and the surrounding Baltimore County
Map of the city and county of Baltimore, Maryland. Robert Taylor, 1857. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.

Living in Baltimore was my first experience living in and navigating an independent city, which is a very familiar concept to you if you’ve ever lived in Baltimore, St. Louis, Carson City, or just about anywhere in Virginia. The U.S. has 41 independent cities, and 38 of them are in Virginia. It was a completely foreign idea to me, though. I had grown up for the first part of my childhood in the city of Philadelphia, a consolidated city-county that is co-extensive with Philadelphia County, and then my family moved to a suburb within Metro Atlanta, which is so large that it’s encompassed within five counties.

a map of Philadelphia County, showing how it encompasses the city of Philadelphia
Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania. U.S. Geological Survey, 1983. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.
a map of Metro Atlanta showing county lines in orange
Greater Atlanta region. U.S. Geological Survey, 1975. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.

It had never occurred to me that a city could be totally independent of counties around it, but I recently learned from a coworker raised in Virginia that independent cities date back to the colonial era, which is why they are so prevalent there. Colonial Virginia’s General Assembly had had the authority to establish towns since 1680, and they established Williamsburg as Virginia’s first city in 1722. For reasons related in part to population density patterns, Virginia’s laws evolved over time to require that towns were established within counties, but they could petition to be incorporated as cities that were independent from the counties that surrounded them. Virginia’s Constitution made provisions for the independence of its cities, which were codified more fully in the Constitution of 1971.

a map of Virginia showing its counties and independent cities
Virginia; independent cities, county subdivisions, magisterial districts and places. 1970. U.S. Census Bureau, 1971. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.

Baltimore’s history as the name of both a county and independent city has a few more twist and turns. For one thing, there’s actually an “old” town of Baltimore that was established in 1661, at a totally different site from the modern-day city. That’s too much of a detour for this post, but I plan to write about it in the future. However, the important part of that digression is that it was the county seat for Baltimore County, which had been established by colonial Maryland authorities in 1659-60. With the county long established, the port of (modern-day) Baltimore was established in 1706, and the town surrounding it was incorporated – as Baltimore Town – in 1729 and became the new county seat of Baltimore County in 1768. In 1796, Baltimore Town was incorporated as Baltimore City, but it was still part of “the county.” This arrangement continued until 1851, when Baltimore City separated governmentally from Baltimore County, becoming an independent city.

There’s a final twist to the Baltimore City versus County story, and it’s a very important one for our researchers to know: over the course of the late 19th and into the 20th centuries, Baltimore City expanded by annexing land that had been in the county, increasing its footprint mainly to the north. You can see the boundary changes in these water supply maps of the city from 1890 and 1914.

water supply of Baltimore City from 1890 showing city limits
Water supply map from 1890 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Baltimore City. Sanborn Map Company, 1890, Vol. 1. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.
a water supply map of Baltimore in 1914 showing city limits
Water supply map from 1914 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Baltimore City. Sanborn Map Company, 1914, Vol. 1. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.

This matters for our researchers who come to look at maps of Baltimore, because sometimes they ask for maps of areas that are currently in Baltimore City, but used to be in Baltimore County. County and city maps are sorted in different places according to Library of Congress classification, which also means that within the Division, they’re not stored in the same drawers. So, sometimes we have to look in multiple places to find a neighborhood or landmark requested by a researcher, depending on the time period they’re looking for!

I’m most familiar with Baltimore – which by the way is the largest independent city in the U.S. – and with the cities of Virginia, but if you have interesting stories about your hometown’s incorporation history, please share in the comments. It just might help a Geography and Map Division reference librarian search more efficiently in the future!

Further Reading

Comments (2)

  1. While we have counties on the maps in Vermont, there are no county governmental structures except for the courts and land use planning. This actually created a bit of delay in Vermont towns receiving the recent ARPA funding because the federal government wanted to send it to “the counties” for distribution.

    • How interesting, thank you for sharing!

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