Holmes County was named after an Indian Chief that lived in the area when the land was settled. Holmes County has had three county seats in its history, the first being Cerro Gordo, then Westville, and finally Bonifay. Bonifay has been the county seat since 1905.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 489 square miles (1,270 km2), of which 479 square miles (1,240 km2) is land and 10 square miles (26 km2) (2.1%) is water.[3]
At the 2020 census, 19,653 people lived in the county. There were 7,282 households and 1,912 people who did not live in households. The population density was 41.0 people per square mile (15.8/km²). The median age was 43.1 years (41.2 for males, 45.4 for females).
Of the total population, 20.6% were under 18 years old, 58.7% were 18 to 64, and 20.7% were 65 or over. Males made up 53.4% and females made up 46.6% of the people. The population was 85.3% White (non-Latino), 6.2% Black (non-Latino), 3.5% Hispanic or Latino, and 3.8% Two or more races (non-Latino). Other races each made up less than 1% of the population.
Of the 7,282 households, 4,778 (65.6%) were families, 2,094 (28.8%) had children under 18, 3,371 (46.3%) had a married couple, and 2,158 (29.6%) had one person living alone. The average household size was 2.4 people. There were 8,622 housing units, and 84.5% had people living in them all year. Of these households, 76.0% were owner-occupied, while 24.0% were renters.[4][5]
As of 2022, the median (middle) yearly income for a household was about $46,063, and the median income for a family was about $55,802.[6] The per capita income was about $22,860.[7] About 14.9% of families[8] and 16.6% of all people in Holmes County lived below the poverty line. This includes 21.5% of children under 18 years old and 11.6% of people over 65 years old.[9]
Triracial people
The so-called "Dominickers", a number of related mixed-race (white, black, and Euchee Indian) families, lived for decades after the American Civil War and well into the twentieth century in a rural area near Ponce de Leon, with a separate church and segregated public elementary school. Although considered a separate ethnicity from both whites and blacks, many Dominickers married into local white families, so that group boundaries blurred; some descendants still live in the area. The 1950 federal census identified 60 members of this group living in Holmes County at that time.[10] Few facts are known about their origins, and little has been published about them.
Holmes County has voted for the Republican candidate in every presidential election since 1980. The county is very strongly Republican in the 21st century.
United States presidential election results for Holmes County, Florida[11]
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