Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) Codes are used to translate each county in the United States and its territories into a six-digit code. These codes were created for mass dissemination systems (such as NOAA Weather Radio), because they are easier for the systems to handle than county and state names.


From the Federal Communications Commission:

“FIPS codes are numbers which uniquely identify geographic areas. The number of digits in FIPS codes vary depending on the level of geography. State-level FIPS codes have two digits, county-level FIPS codes have five digits of which the first two are the FIPS code of the state to which the county belongs. When using the list below to look up county FIPS codes, it is advisable to first look up the FIPS code for the state to which the county belongs. This will help you identify the right section of the list while scrolling down, which can be important since there are over 3000 counties and county-equivalents (e.g. independent cities, parishes, boroughs) in the United States.”


         It is important to note that a FIPS code is not necessarily the same thing as a Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME) code. A FIPS code is obtained by combining the number “0” with a two-digit state code and a three-digit county code. As an example, Missouri's state code is “29”. Gentry County's code is “075”. Therefore, the FIPS code for Gentry County, Missouri is “029075”. For a SAME code, the first digit would be something between 1 and 9 to further pinpoint a specific area inside Gentry County.