William A. Fischel (Dartmouth College – Department of Economics) has posted The Origins of American Counties Part IV: The Great Plains and Mountain States: Counties as All-purpose Governments on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This is the fourth of five papers of a book in progress, “The Origins of American Counties.” For a full introduction, see Part I, “Theory and New England.” My book explains why counties were formed in a complex dance between localities that wanted to be a county seat and state legislatures eager to control their territory, and then frozen within rigid configurations in the twentieth century. My method is to examine in detail the historical origins of the two smallest counties—by land area and by modern population—in each state. These represent the main problems that modern observers see in counties: underpopulated rural counties and urban counties that do not encompass their metropolitan areas. The county became the primary local government in the Great Plains and the Rockies because the arid climate and mountainous terrain made for low population densities and few towns. The average land area of rural counties in this region was four times as large as counties in the East. Splitting the largest counties was impractical because each of the offspring would be too small to finance even modest public services. In this setting, competition for the county seat was often a matter of life or death for a town and sometimes did result in deadly competition among rival communities. The order in which the eleven states are discussed is North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.
The other parts of the series are also on SSRN:
The Origins of American Counties. Part I: Theory and New England
The Origins of American Counties. Part II: Northern States
The Origins of American Counties. Part III: The Southern States
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