Rival political factions disagreed about whether the county seat should be in Concord, a community north of present-day Leary, or in Dickey, then known as Whitney. As a compromise, a spot halfway between Concord and Whitney was chosen for the county seat, and the town of Morgan was established there.[2]
In 1923 the state legislature moved the county seat to Arlington as directed by a county referendum. This decision was reversed in 1929, restoring Morgan as the county seat.[2]
Calhoun Memorial Hospital, a 25-bed critical access hospital in Arlington originally founded as a Hill-Burton hospital,[4] closed in 2013 after 62 years of operation.[5][6]
In 2008, members of the Downtown Business Authority in Arlington founded the South Georgia Regional Information Technology Authority (SGRITA) with help from the state government to provide wireless broadband service to several counties in rural southwest Georgia.[7][8] In 2017 SGRITA moved its office to Blakely in Early County.[9]
Geography
The county seat is Morgan,[10] where the historic Calhoun County Courthouse is located. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 284 square miles (740km2), of which 280 square miles (730km2) is land and 3.2 square miles (8.3km2) (1.1%) is water.[11]
The vast majority of Calhoun County is in the Ichawaynochaway Creek sub-basin of the ACF River Basin (Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin). The county's western and southwestern corner, from Arlington running northwest to west of Edison, is in the Spring Creek sub-basin of the same larger ACF River Basin.[12]
Calhoun County, Georgia – Racial and ethnic composition Note: the US 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.
As of the 2020 census, the county had a population of 5,573 people and 1,671 households.[32] A total of 1,152 families resided in the county, and the average household size was 2.56.[33] Of the residents, 15.9% were under the age of 18 and 16.8% were 65 years of age or older; the median age was 41.6 years.[32] Another 4.0% were under 5 years old.[33] The population was 39.3% female; for every 100 females there were 154.1 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over there were 165.6 males.[32][33] 0.0% of residents lived in urban areas and 100.0% lived in rural areas.[34] The foreign-born population was 4.1% of the total, and 7.7% of residents aged 5 or older spoke a language other than English at home.[33]
Of the 1,671 households in the county, 29.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them and 42.4% had a female householder with no spouse or partner present. About 33.5% of all households were made up of individuals and 15.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.[32]
There were 2,020 housing units, of which 17.3% were vacant. Among occupied housing units, 66.5% were owner-occupied and 33.5% were renter-occupied. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.1% and the rental vacancy rate was 8.1%.[32]
The Calhoun County School District has an elementary school and a middle-high school all in Edison. The district has about 530 students.[36]
Pataula Charter Academy opened in 2010 in Edison as a tuition-free public charter school serving several counties in southwest Georgia. It has about 609 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.[37]
As of the 2020s, Calhoun County is a Democratic stronghold, voting 56% for Kamala Harris in 2024. Calhoun County is usually staunchly Democratic in US presidential elections. The last Republican candidate to win the county was Richard Nixon in 1972.
