In the western US counties are most important to real estate agents and lawyers. Real estate tends to be ranked by county (Marin is high status, Kern is low status in California). Lawyers care because each county has a county seat where the courthouse, sheriff, and most other county offices are located. There always seems to be tension between big and little. People from Eastern Washington or Oregon are supposed to dislike and mistrust people from west of the mountains, and within a county the rural areas and urban areas tend to band together against each other.   It is also traditional for country folk to abhor the county seat, especially if it is also the largest town. But counties are administrative entities created by the state goverments, and they don't carry anything remotely like the historical weight that they do in those islands over there (whatever they may be called).