Hi everyone, I'm a small geography youtuber from Cleveland, Ohio (here is my channel) and I'm traveling to Austin for a week on Sunday. I've never been to Texas, and I want to use my time there to make some videos about Texas's geography, especially considering that its such a massive state. One thing thats interesting about Texas is that it has 254 counties, by far the most of any US state. Its one thing to google 'why does Texas have so many counties' and make a video explaining the history (which just boils down to 'people need to be able to reach the county seat in one day on a horse') but what do you guys, actual Texans, think about this? What role does county government play in a state with so many of them? Do people in Texas often identify more with their hometown, or their home county? Do rural Texas counties have stronger sense of 'county identity' than those of the larger cities, like Bexar (San Antonio), Travis (Austin), Harris (Houston), etc? Is 'county identity' not really a thing? What do you guys think needs to be mentioned in a video where I try to explain the history of how Texas ended up with such a large amount of first-level subdivisions? Thanks for any answers!

TLDR - Making a video about why Texas has so many counties, but I want some personal anecdotes about how this affects the states culture/identity, rather than making the video a straightforward history lesson.

EXTRA FUN FACT - You guys have a county (Loving County, seat is Mentone) with only about 82 residents. Other than a micro-county in Hawaii, its the least populous county in the entire United States. Its about 650 square miles, meaning that each resident theoretically could have 10 square miles of land to themselves. Only in Texas!