King County is the largest county in the state of Washington. It was originally named after William R. King, who was vice president under Franklin Pierce, but it was renamed after Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1986. It has a land area of 2,134 sq. miles (1,365,760 acres). In 1990, it had a population of 1,507,319 people (according to the official web site). It is the twelfth most populous county in the United States, with more people than Estonia. It has 38 cities, the largest of which is Seattle. Other singificant cities in the county are Bellevue, Tacoma and Redmond. The largest employers are Boeing, the University of Washington, and Microsoft.

Most information in this wu is from the official King County web site at http://www.metrokc.gov/