Bullfrog County was a short-lived county in the U.S. state of Nevada, created by the Nevada Legislature in 1987. It consisted of an uninhabited 144-square-mile (370 km2) area around Yucca Mountain, completely enclosed by southern Nye County, the county from which it was created. Its creation was ruled in violation of the state constitution by the Nevada District Courts in 1989. In compliance with the ruling, the legislature dissolved Bullfrog County and reincorporated its territory into Nye County.[1]
To date, Bullfrog County is the only county with a population of 0 to have existed in the United States, and except for the South Dakota jurisdictions of Shannon and Todd, the only organized county whose county seat was not contained within its boundaries. Bullfrog County was not accessible by roads and contained no buildings or infrastructure of any kind.[2]
The county's establishment was a response to plans by the United States federal government to create a disposal site for radioactive waste in Yucca Mountain. The government agreed to provide payment-equal-to taxes (PETT) funding to Nye County during the characterization and construction of the Yucca Mountain repository. This money was intended to go straight to the county government, bypassing the state government. In response, the Nevada Legislature declared the unpopulated area around the proposed nuclear waste site to be a new county, Bullfrog County. Because this new county had no population, any federal payments for placing the nuclear waste site there would go directly to the state treasury. Furthermore, property tax rates in the county were set at 20 percent, or $5 on every $100 valued, the highest allowable by the state constitution. This tax burden (potentially up to $25 million) was meant to discourage the waste site's creation, but it also guaranteed that, should the site be built anyway, its existence would at least be profitable for the state government.[3]
The existence of Bullfrog County created serious legal problems for the state of Nevada. It was not included in any of Nevada's nine district courts; thus, Bullfrog County had no judiciary. Furthermore, the Nevada State Constitution states that, in the event of a jury trial, the jury be made up of residents of the county the crime was committed in. Thus, if a felony was committed in Bullfrog County, a jury would be impossible since no residents exist. For these and other reasons, the establishment of the county was challenged by the state government and the government of Nye County, and the Nevada district court found it to be in violation of the state constitution due of its zero population size. In compliance, the state legislature abolished Bullfrog County in 1989, and the territory was absorbed back into Nye County.[4]