Bolivar, MS

Bolivar is a census-designated place and unincorporated community in Bolivar County, Mississippi, United States. The 2020 census counted 39 residents. Bolivar was once the county seat, and Bolivar Landing was its port on the Mississippi River. Now permanently cut off from the river, Bolivar is a quiescent residential hamlet, while Bolivar Landing, immediately north and across the immense Mississippi Levee, is a cottage community on Lake Whittington. A newcomer can read Bolivar through the overlap of its older landmarks, surrounding geography, and current places. For a newcomer, Bolivar comes into focus through those concrete links among its past, landscape, and current routines. After the near-destruction of Prentiss during the Civil War, the courthouse was placed on a flat-boat and carried down the river to Bolivar Landing. In 1874, high waters on the Mississippi River broke a levee at Bolivar Landing, forming a crevasse 1,900 ft wide.