Henry County is located in the north central portion of theU.S. state ofGeorgia. According to the 2020 census,[1][2] the population of Henry County was 240,712, up from 203,922 in 2010. Thecounty seat isMcDonough.[3] The county was named forPatrick Henry.[4]
Henry County, Georgia, was created by the Georgia State Legislature in 1821 from land acquired from theCreek Indian Nation by theFirst Treaty of Indian Springs. Henry's original land area was much larger than it is today, stretching from nearIndian Springs (present-dayIndian Springs State Park) in the south to theChattahoochee River near Sandy Springs in the north; encompassing most of present-day Metropolitan Atlanta. Before one year had passed, the size of the county was diminished through the separation of land areas which, in whole or in part, became the present-dayDeKalb,Fulton,Fayette andNewton counties. Later divisions resulted inClayton,Spalding,Rockdale andButts counties.
In the beginning Henry County was a virgin wilderness, having just been ceded from the Creek Nation. Prior to 1821, the Creeks and a few trappers and traders were the only residents of this area. The Creek Indians left their mark through place names, a few small Indian Mounds scattered around the county and through the arrowheads and broken pottery which can be found throughout Henry County.
Jesse Johnson, son of John Johnson and great-grandfather ofU.S. PresidentLyndon Baines Johnson, was a "first settler" of Henry County. He was a prosperous farmer, the second sheriff (1822–1835), and judge, before he moved toTexas.[5]Jonesboro Road stretches through the county.[6] In 1995, Henry County was the sixth-fastest-growing county in the United States.[7]
According to theU.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 327 square miles (850 km2), of which 322 square miles (830 km2) is land and 4.4 square miles (11 km2) (1.4%) is water.[8]
The vast majority of Henry County is located in the UpperOcmulgee River sub-basin of theAltamaha River basin, with just a very small western corner, west ofHampton, located in the UpperFlint River sub-basin of theACF River Basin (Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin).[9]
Henry County, Georgia – Racial and ethnic composition Note: the U.S. census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a separate category. Hispanics/Latinos may be of any race.
Additionally, a pair of warehouses used to exist along US 23 south of McDonough, one of which was owned byWhirlpool Corporation, and the other byToys 'R' Us.
Atlanta Motor Speedway is located in Henry County and hosts an annual NASCAR race and many other events throughout the year, including the 2021Publix Atlanta Marathon, which moved to the Speedway premises.
Mercer University has a Regional Academic Center inMcDonough. The center, opened in 2003, offers programs through the university's College of Continuing and Professional Studies and Mercer's Tift College of Education.Clayton State University andGordon College also offer a range of college courses at the Academy for Advanced Studies in McDonough.
Southern Crescent Technical College's Henry County Center (in McDonough) offers programs in Allied Health, Business Technology, Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Computer Information Systems, Personal Services, Public Safety, and Drafting Technology.[25]
The Henry County Board of Commissioners is responsible for administering county government to residents. Four commissioners are elected by voters in individual districts, while the commission chairman is elected countywide and serves as the county's chief executive. June Wood, the former commission chair, was the first African-American to serve in the position after being elected in a December 2016 run-off election. She left office in December 2020 after losing her bid for re-election. As of January 2023, the following individuals serve the county on the Board of Commissioners:
Prior to1984, Henry County had a presidential voting pattern typical of any otherSolid South county in Georgia, consistently awarding landslide margins to Democrats. In 1920, it was one of three counties in the state (alongsideBleckley andColumbia) to give 100% of the vote to Democratic nomineeJames M. Cox.[27] The first Republican to win Henry County wasRichard Nixon in1972, doing so with 77.93% of the vote,[28] though it returned to the Democratic column when native GeorgianJimmy Carter won it in1976 and1980.
From 1984 to2004, Henry County was a Republican stronghold, consistent with several Atlanta suburbs, as well as other suburban areas across the country.[29] Strong margins in Henry County and other Atlanta suburbs were vital to Republicans' performance, offsetting strongly Democratic Black voters in Atlanta proper.[30] Republican dominance peaked in1988, whenGeorge H.W. Bush won 71.11% of the vote to Michael Dukakis' 28.41%, a 42.7% margin of victory.[31] During this time, no Democrat managed to attain even 40 percent of the county's vote.
In the 2010s, the county rapidly flipped from being safely Republican at the start of the decade to safely Democratic by the end, thanks to explosive population growth that brought an influx of Democratic-leaning minority voters into the county, and a growing Democratic trend among suburban voters in general.[29] The African American percentage of the population increased from 14.7% in the2000 Census to 36.9% in2010 and 48.4% in2020, while the white proportion of the population fell from 81.4% in 2000 to 55.0% in 2010 and 35.9% in 2020.[32] In2004, DemocratJohn Kerry lost the county by 33.7%, but in2008[33] and2012, DemocratBarack Obama lost the county by only 7.4% and 3.3%, respectively.[34] In2016,Hillary Clinton won the county for the Democrats for the first time in 36 years, by a 4.4 percentage point margin of victory, despite the rightward shift taken by the rest of the country.[35] In2020, the county swung 16.1 points deeper into the Democratic column, the largest Democratic swing of any county in the country in that election,[36] culminating inJoe Biden winning the county by 20.5 percentage points as he carried Georgia. In2022, it was one of the few counties whereStacey Abrams improved on her2018 margin against RepublicanBrian Kemp even as she performed worse statewide. She took 61% of the vote, andRaphael Warnock defeatedHerschel Walker with a similar share of the vote inthe concurrent Senate race. In2024,Kamala Harris won 64.5% of the vote in Henry,[37] a continued improvement on both Clinton and Biden's margins despite her statewide loss, and also the best showing for a non-Georgian Democrat in the county sinceJohn F. Kennedy in1960. Henry swung the furthest for Harris than any other county in the country that year.[38]
United States presidential election results for Henry County, Georgia[39]
Henry County is one of six "reverse pivot counties", counties that voted Republican in 2008 and 2012 before voting Democratic in 2016 onward.[40] It is also the county that shifted furthest to the left since 2012, having done so by 33 percentage points as of 2024.[41]
Henry County operates its own reservation-based transit service for use by county residents.[43] In addition,Xpress, a regional commuter bus service operated by theGeorgia Regional Transportation Authority, serves park-and-ride lots in Stockbridge, Hampton, and McDonough.
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