It occupies the Calvert Peninsula, which is bordered on the east by Chesapeake Bay and on the west by the Patuxent River.

In 1608, Captain John Smith was the first European to sail past Calvert County while exploring the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

Their diet was composed of fish from the river and corn cultivated in man-made clearings with a supplement of game from the forests.

These clearings were very desirable and conflict occurred when the settlers attempted to seize these areas from the Native Americans.

Leonard Calvert, the first Governor of the Maryland, organized troops of armed men in 1639 to protect the settlers.

[4] The first written mention of European settlers on the northern shore of the Patuxent River is found in the records of the Maryland Assembly in 1642.

All new settlers in Maryland were required to take an oath of allegiance to Lord Baltimore per the "Conditions of Plantation".

[4] On July 3, 1654, Lord Baltimore abolished Charles County and removed all authority from Brooke.

195 contracts were signed between Calvert county farmers and property owners and The Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission.

[14] In the early 19th Century, in the contests between the Hamiltonian Federalist and Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican parties of the First Party System, it backed the Federalists four out of seven times, only going for the Democratic-Republicans in their greatest landslides of 1804 and 1816 as well as the 1820 election in which President James Monroe ran effectively unopposed.

Up until the Civil War, Calvert County voted only for the candidates of the Whig Party, the Democrat's primary opposition.

[17] In Presidential elections, Calvert County has historically and at present leaned strongly towards the Republican Party.

It was won by that party in every election from 1884 to 1936 – with the sequence broken in 1940 due to local support for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's efforts at helping Britain in World War II[18] – and in modern times no Democratic presidential nominee has won Calvert County since Jimmy Carter did so in 1976.

President Joe Biden came only 5% from winning the county in 2020,[19] the closest any Democrat has come since Jimmy Carter carried it in 1976.

Located on the western shore of the county, Calvert Cliffs are famous for their fossil deposits and are a popular collecting location of marine vertebrates, shark teeth, birds as well as fresh water and marine turtles and tortoises.

These terraces correspond to three periods where the water level rose and later fell, leaving sand deposits.

The oldest was created during the Miocene Age when the entire county peninsula found itself underwater.

In the Trewartha climate classification the county is classified as oceanic (Do) except in the extreme south which is Cf.

Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant is located on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay at Lusby, as is the Cove Point LNG Terminal.

The Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, part of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science is located in Solomons.

A branch of the United States Naval Research Laboratory is located at Chesapeake Beach.

[citation needed] Additionally, there is a private Catholic Pre-K-8 school-Cardinal Hickey Academy- located in Owings.

Route 2-4 is designated Solomons Island Road throughout much of the county, with the section south of Prince Frederick being recently renamed Louis Goldstein Highway in memory of Louis L. Goldstein, the former comptroller of Maryland and Calvert County resident.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Route 2-4 underwent an extensive expansion project, with the formerly two-lane road becoming a four-lane dual highway.

The reason behind the "town center" designation is to cluster new development within established areas with existing infrastructure, thus discouraging urban sprawl.

The implementation of the "town center" concept in Calvert County over the past two decades has for the most part been successful in preserving rural and agricultural areas outside the designated "town centers", and stands as a key example of the smart growth planning strategy.

The opening scene of the 1993 Clint Eastwood movie In the Line of Fire was filmed at Flag Harbor Marina in St.

[citation needed] More recently, the Calvert County Sheriff's Department has been featured on several reality television programs, including Speeders on the truTV network, MTV's Busted,[citation needed] and was featured weekly on A&E's Live PD.