May 16, 2008

FIPS County Lookup

"Help! I have a bunch of FIPS codes and I want to find the counties they designate."

Try the Census Bureau's FIPS County Lookup. You can use it in three ways:

• Select a state name and see the FIPS codes for all the counties.
• Type in a county and see the two-digit state and three-digit county code.
• Type in the five-digit FIPS code and see the state and county names. For example, type in "32003" and you'll see this is the FIPS code for Clark County, Nevada.

The lookup also lets you download a simple text file showing the FIPS code for each county in the nation arranged by state. FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) codes are the official government identifiers for geographic areas such as counties, cities, metro areas, etc. More information. [PDF] or denotes a file in Adobe’s Portable Document Format. To view the file, you will need the Adobe® Acrobat® Reader available free from Adobe.