A county of the United States is a local level of government created as a subdivision of a state by the state government or by the federal or territorial government as a subdivision of a territory. The word county is used in 48 of the 50 states, while Louisiana uses the term parish and Alaska uses the word borough. Including those, there are 3,077 counties in the US, an average of 62 counties per state. The state with the fewest counties is Delaware (3), and the state with the most is Texas (254)