wjstie's county project

[wjstiecounty]

explanation

a while ago i thought it'd be fun to research a tiny bit about a us county a day then do a tiny review about each one

originally i was gonna do this on twitter but i think tumblr is better suited for a project like this + making sideblogs is easy compared to either making a new twitter account or annoying everyone who follows my main + i won't have to worry about a character limit

considering that there are 3143 counties and county equivalents in the us this is gonna take a while so let's see if i manage to stay invested to this for any length of time

the structure will probably be:

COUNTY NAME, STATE (COUNTY #, ALPHABETICALLY)

[MAP OF COUNTY]

ARBITRARY RAMBLINGS OF WHATEVER I FIND FUNNY OR INTERESTING

SCORE/10

don't bother checking out my main atm idrk how tumblr works and idk what i'll be posting on there

[wjstiecounty]

ADAMS, ND (16)

county seat: hettinger population: 2200

named after john quincy adams, but a different one than the former president. apparently he was a distant relative of the president who worked as an agent of a railroad company the county seat is named after hettinger county, from which adams county was made from. idk why they got to keep the city but not the county name there are 3 nrhp listings, of which the coolest one is the courthouse. given that hettinger is a town of less than 2k people idk why they got such a big courthouse but ig the like 2 crimes they have to adjudicate every year warrants smth like that the one physical thing that the wikipedia articles mention besides nrhp listings is a livestock research station operated by the north dakota state university overall the least populous county so far and it shows, there's pretty much nothing here

3/10

[wjstiecounty]

ADAMS, NE (15)

county seat: hastings population: 31,511

the most famous invention from here, and the third sentence in the hastings wikipedia article, is koolaid. they host a koolaid festival in hastings every august which sounds amazing besides koolaid the other major attraction is a big fountain, apparently the biggest from chicago to denver (although there is a citation needed tag next to that claim) most of the nrhp listings are either big residential houses or big brick buildings. i have to go with the old hotel bc it reminds me of some buildings in my hometown overall a good county, koolaid is pretty decent™

6/10

[wjstiecounty]

ADAMS, MS (14)

county seat: natchez population: 31,192

there are 120 nrhp listings in this county - far more than any other county previously - including 13 national historic landmarks. from what i can tell most of these are civil war-era Big Houses or Big Churches. there are far too many for me to give an accurate answer of which is my favorite, but there are quite a few cool looking mansions and churches. it is worth mentioning though that most, if not all of them, were build by wealthy plantation owners off the back of the slave trade this used to be the richest county in the us before the civil war and the first county to be made in what is now modern-day mississippi the majority of the content of the adams county and natchez wikipedia pages is about the history up to and including the civil war, with very minimal info about the current day. overall a county famous for its historical sites and not much else. the big houses are pretty cool though

4/10

[wjstiecounty]

ADAMS, IA (13)

county seat: corning population: 3704

you cannot tell me that the county seat of an iowan county is called fucking corning you're kidding me apparently the least populous county in iowa. the fact that it still has 3k people is surprising to me but ig iowa's population is fairly evenly spread out there are only 4 nrhp listings here, none of which are all too interesting. ig my favorite is the jail johnny carson was born in corning. crazy that there's someone that i've heard of from the <2k population town of corning, iowa there's a manmade lake called lake icaria that's apparently a decent-sized tourism spot overall a great county almost solely bc the county seat is called corning and it reminds me of corning my religion by sam onella

7/10

[wjstiecounty]

ADAMS, IN (12)

county seat: decatur population: 35,809

coolest building is the courthouse, as is the case with like half the counties so far not much about decatur besides its awful history of killing native americans and expelling black people even after the civil war, but some of the smaller towns have some cool things in them. berne is known for a large amish community, strong swiss heritage, and the "furniture capital of indiana". overall there seems to be a large swiss-descended population not too many juicy facts in this one, only a very shitty history toward minorities and the furniture captial of indiana

3/10

[wjstiecounty]

ADAMS, IL (11)

county seat: quincy population: 65,737

can you guess which former president the county seat and the county name are both named after? million dollar question (oh apparently it was called Bluffs then it was renamed after the *newly elected* john quincy adams. serious dickriding) apparently quincy used to be illinois' second largest city but now it's the 41st. oops there wasn't a nrhp list article but it did show this super cool mansion in the main article. apparently there's a large (well as large as you can get with 60k people) architecture and music scene there which is really cool overall a cool looking place even if it was named after a newly elected president

6/10

[wjstiecounty]

ADAMS, ID (10)

county seat: council population: 4379

we've hit both double digits and our first repeated state. a bit weird that it's idaho of all states but ig it had to be something the two cities in this county are both fucking amazing, there's Council which is both a stupid name and home of the "World Champion Porcupine Race", and New Meadows, which is just a dumb name. there are so many meadows why is this the new one there aren't really many cool buildings besides maybe the old railroad depot, but there's part of a ski resort so that's cool overall i love this county so much

9/10

[wjstiecounty]

ADAMS, CO (9)

county seat: brighton population: 519,572

part of the denver metropolitan area (denver proper is the weird looking county to the southwest) the coolest nrhp place is easily a big castle/university thing that still holds classes apparently, i wanna take one there the only mention in the "in popular culture" section is a reference to it from a south park episode lmao despite having the largest population of any county so far i feel like there's the least to talk about but the castle is awesome so it kinda makes up for that

6/10

[wjstiecounty]

ADAIR, OK (8)

county seat: stilwell population: 22,194

believe it or not the coolest building in this county is not the courthouse but an old mill famous for strawberries apparently and there is or was a strawberry festival held in stilwell every year the only majority-minority county in oklahoma (43.3% native american) named not after a former governor of kentucky like the other adair counties but after a cherokee leader named william adair (or maybe one of his descendants? a bit unclear) pretty cool county i like strawberries

6/10

[wjstiecounty]

ADAIR, MO (7)

(POSTED THIS ON THE WRONG ACCOUNT YESTERDAY OOPS)

county seat: kirksville population: 25,314

another county with a national register of historic places wiki page and another where the courthouse is the coolest building, although some of the churches look cool too it apparently has two universities despite having only 25k people? weird the only two things in the history section are a multiparagraph explanation of a skirmish with the native americans that lived there then like 3 sentences about the courthouse lmao not too much here, a few cool buildings and tiny universities but also the deaths of a bunch of native americans

3/10

[wjstiecounty]

ADAIR, KY (6)

county seat: columbia population: 18,903

starting to think that most counties have national register of historic places listings bc this one does too. the courthouse is really cool but everything else is kinda boring there's an unincorporated community called Breeding. Breeding, Kentucky one of its most famous events is a bank robbery that happened in 1872. apparently they still do reenactments of it? i'm curious to see that now other than that there's not much, it's 96% white and super conservative but it has good courthouses and unincorporated community names

4/10

[wjstiecounty]

ADAIR, IA (5)

county seat: greenfield population: 7496

the first of four adair counties, and probably the most boring, being in the middle of iowa. however the wikipedia page also has a list of national register of of historical places listings like accomack county. my favorites are a cool old courthouse, viaduct and hotel (not all the same thing). one of the other things that caught my eye was a section in the greenfield wikipedia page called Freedom Rock, which is a big ol rock that someone paints patriotic things on every memorial day.

not too much going on here but the courthouse in particular is really cool and Freedom Rock is very funny to me

5/10

[wjstiecounty]

ADA, ID (4)

county seat: boise population: 494,967

i couldn't confirm this for sure but i'm 90% sure this is or is tied for the shortest county name, i really can't see a county being 2 letters long contains most of the boise metropolitan area which is why the population's so big i was actually at my friend ada's house today so the fact that ada county was today too is very strange coincidence overall a very good county, boise seems like a cool city + it shares a name with one of my friends + interesting name length means this scores pretty high 8.5/10

[wjstiecounty]

ACCOMACK, VA (3)

county seat: accomac population: 33,413

i really like how the county was originally spelled "accomac" with no k, like the county seat, then in 1940 the county council just kinda added a k at the end for no reason at all wikipedia has a whole page for historic places in the county, idk how common that is bc this is only my third county but it's pretty interesting. it lists 29, with most of them being just old buildings or churches, but there's also a lighthouse so that's cool can't tell whether the county seat and county name being 1 letter off is very funny or very annoying but i'm gonna err on the side of very funny + lighthouses and other old buildings are cool

7/10

[wjstiecounty]

ACADIA, LA (2)

county seat: crowley population: 57,576

louisiana's counties are legally called parishes bc the french and spanish administrative divisions were called parishes, so this is *technically* not a county named after the acadia region in canada 🍁🍁so that's always a plus the guy who designed the statue for the oscars was born here and crowley is apparently called the rice capital of the world other than that not much of note, canada and rice is pretty cool though

5/10

[wjstiecounty]

ABBEVILLE, SC (1)

county seat: abbeville population: 24,299

the first county of the project! shame that the wikipedia article has a list of 9 documented lynching as one of the first things other than that it seems fine, went on streetview in abbeville and it looks like a normal small southern town, and there's part of a national forest there which is nice

nothing much to say about this (idk if that'll become the catchphrase for this project), but it looks like a chill little place despite its troubled past

4/10