Photo from City of Holmes Beach, FaceBook
Holmes Beach, Anna Maria Island
Just south of the town of Anna Maria is Holmes Beach. It doesn’t have a quaint village as it is residential with stores here and there and a few typical shopping plazas and supermarket. Mostly single family homes, what you won’t find are condominium complexes. As of 2020 the census estimate suggested a population of about 4000 people. Here’s dash cam footage taken by Mileage Mike while driving around the town, which is rather boring.
Somewhat confusing, the beach in the town of Holmes Beach is actually Manatee Beach which extends south into the town of Bradenton Beach. There are public restrooms and showers, picnic tables, grills and a kids’ playground.
There isn’t much to do in Holmes Beach, but its value may be that there is a ton of free parking on side streets near the beach with many public access points. Here’s a map you an expand and see exactly where all the access points and public parking spots are. There is a well founded story that Garth Brooks bought the Layby waterfront resort on Holmes Beach for $8.825 million dollars, only to tear it down with plans to rebuild.
The many access points are shown in orange on the map below right with lots of side street parking for all of them, or you can park in the town lots in the red square, and be near amenities like the bathrooms.
Somewhat confusing, the beach in the town of Holmes Beach is actually Manatee Beach which extends south into the town of Bradenton Beach. There are public restrooms and showers, picnic tables, grills and a kids’ playground.
There isn’t much to do in Holmes Beach, but its value may be that there is a ton of free parking on side streets near the beach with many public access points. Here’s a map you an expand and see exactly where all the access points and public parking spots are. There is a well founded story that Garth Brooks bought the Layby waterfront resort on Holmes Beach for $8.825 million dollars, only to tear it down with plans to rebuild.
The many access points are shown in orange on the map below right with lots of side street parking for all of them, or you can park in the town lots in the red square, and be near amenities like the bathrooms.
Follow Manatee Avenue from Gulf Drive which runs the whole length of the keys.
Photo from City of Holmes Beach website
Manatee Ave also crosses over to the city of Bradenton on the main land (Rt 64), so you can avoid the long ride up Long Boat Key, and drive up Tamiami Trail on the mainland and cross over.
Now we’ll explore Bradenton Beach in the next section.
