Monday, April 6, 2009

Aiken County, South Carolina

Close but no chowdah!


"Aiken County is the size of Rhode Island and has 22 volunteer fire departments protecting the lives and property of its residents."

And more points to them. When I think about living in a state where one county is nearly the size of Rhode Island, it makes me twitch. I am the kind of Rhode Islander (South County style) who gets to Providence maybe a couple of times a year.

They are also, somewhat surprisingly, almost right about this size thing, although why people in South Carolina would bother measuring things in Rhode Islands is beyond me.
Anyhoo, Aiken county is 1,073 sq mi, while Rhode Island is 1,545 sq mi. Interestingly, Aiken County seems to have a real issue with l'il Rhody- on the official Aiken County website, they claim that "Aiken is the fourth largest South Carolina county by land area, and its size of 1,073 square miles is 28 square miles larger than the state of Rhode Island." They are wrong, but it is still so much closer to right than most usages, and they are Southern, so I'll cut them some slack. They might have measured Aiken County wrong for all I know.

Link to Aiken Standard, South Carolina

2 comments:

  1. Do you calculate land area or total area including water? It'd be a good chunk of change if you just multiply width by height. That could account for the delta.

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  2. According to your state's official website, Rhode Island is 1045 square miles. That's 28 square miles smaller than Aiken County.

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