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July 7, 2006 10:25 AM

I'm trying to find a list of Washington counties by zip code. Why is it so hard to find?

I imagine that there are some zip codes that cross county lines, but still - isn't there a list where I can look up "99223" and see that it's in Spokane county, or see that "98195" is in King? Googling leads to several sites that are only for King county, and lots of laminated "zip code posters".

FWIW, this is for a Filemaker address book database. I'd like to be able to have a calculation where the county field is filled in when a certain zip code is entered. Yeah, I know, it's not that hard to just have someone enter the county, but this would be mainly used on old records that we don't have the time to sort through.

Thanks in advance.

posted by rossination to Grab Bag (11 answers total)

Would this get you halfway? A list of ZIP codes in Washington and their respective cities/townships.
posted by deadfather at 10:28 AM on July 7, 2006

Ask and ye shall receive: here. Scroll down a little, and then click county of interest.
posted by ifranzen at 10:28 AM on July 7, 2006

here
posted by aerify at 10:29 AM on July 7, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks, all. These are all pretty good (I had found the Wikipedia one earlier), but none of them really give me a list that I can work with. Aerify's comes the closest, since I can look by city, but I'd really like to be able to select a county and be given a list of zip codes that it encompasses. I probably didn't make that very clear above.
posted by rossination at 10:50 AM on July 7, 2006

I could be wrong, but I believe my previous link, here, does give you the ability to do that.
posted by ifranzen at 11:03 AM on July 7, 2006

Best answer: This is a pretty comprehensive list. This does what you want but you have to submit each zip through the interface.
posted by modofo at 11:09 AM on July 7, 2006

Best answer: From the '99 US Census, the U.S. Postal Service ZIP Codes should contain the data you need in a dBase file. You will need to filter for Washington state plus know the FIPS County Codes (which are listed here).
posted by bCat at 11:11 AM on July 7, 2006

Correlating ZIP codes to geographical units can be difficult, because ZIP codes don't necessarily have any relation to real world physical or political boundaries.

That's not to say you can't come up with a list of all ZIPs in say, King County, Washington, but ZIPs are not the contiguous, logical areas one might think.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:17 AM on July 7, 2006

Response by poster: Ifranzen, yours got the closest, but it gave me a map as opposed to a list. I think that Modofo's is what I need -- now I just need to convert that mess of a list into something I can throw into Filemaker. Ideas?
posted by rossination at 11:31 AM on July 7, 2006

Best answer: fine. this is driving me nuts. check yr google account. that should do the trick.
posted by lester at 11:39 AM on July 7, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks lester and everyone else. I've got it figured out.
posted by rossination at 11:54 AM on July 7, 2006