Interactive North Carolina county map

How to use the interactive map

This map renders all 100 North Carolina counties as a single SVG, so every county is individually selectable, searchable, and styleable. Three input methods are supported, and they all stay in sync:

• Mouse / touch. Scroll or pinch to zoom. Click and drag to pan once you've zoomed in. Click a county to select it; the table on the right scrolls to the matching row and a quick-profile card appears below the map.
• Keyboard. Tab to the map and use + / − to zoom, the arrow keys to pan, and 0 to reset. Tab into the table and use the arrow keys to move row-by-row, Enter to open a county's full page, and Z to zoom the map to the highlighted county.
• Search & filter. Type a county or county-seat name in the search box, or use the region filter to narrow to Mountains, Piedmont, or Coastal Plain. The map continues to show the full state — only the table list filters — so you always keep geographic context.

The selection state is announced to screen readers via an aria-live region, and every column header in the table is a sortable button with the correct aria-sort state. The map's tooltip is also exposed as a native SVG <title> element, so assistive tech reads the county name on hover.

Tips for journalists and researchers

Need a single county for a story? Click it, then "Open full profile" to jump to a sourced page with population, county seat, land area, density, year established, and neighboring counties. Need a comparison? Sort the table by population or area, then use Z to fly the map between counties without losing your sort order.

Map styles explained

Each variant uses the same authoritative boundary data — only the styling changes — so you can match the map to the story you're telling.

• Regions. Counties are color-coded by their classical region (Mountains, Piedmont, Coastal Plain). Best for orientation and for K–12 geography lessons.
• Population choropleth. A six-step blue ramp from the smallest counties (under 10,000 residents) to the largest (Wake and Mecklenburg, both above one million). Best for stories about growth, density, and metro concentration.
• Labeled. Plain background with each county's name overlaid. Best for classroom worksheets and reference handouts.
• County seats. Plain background with each county's seat city overlaid instead of the county name. Best for government, courts, and elections reporting.
• Plain outline. Boundaries only — no fill, no labels. Best as a base layer for your own annotations, or as a coloring sheet.