[5] The first recorded European to visit what is today Camden County was Captain Jean Ribault of France in 1562.

However, settlement south of the Altamaha River (what is now Glynn and Camden Counties) was discouraged by both the British and Spanish governments.

One group of settlers led by Edmund Gray sparked Spanish military action after settling on the Satilla River in the 1750s near present-day Burnt Fort, and were subsequently disbanded by the Royal Governor John Reynolds.

Largely due to security issues arising from proximity to powerful Indian groups and British Florida, Georgia was the last colony to join in the War for Independence in 1775.

They built a fort on the St. Marys River in 1775 to protect their lands and chattel during the war after repeated attacks by patriot banditti.

The Americans rebuilt it when they invaded East Florida, and then burned it down to prevent it falling into enemy hands.

Various forest products including turpentine and timber were produced, mainly for consumption in the naval industry and the West Indies.

Camden County was the site of many trading posts with the Native Americans, who by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries consisted mainly of people of the Creek Nation.

An important step towards establishing boundaries in the Early Federal period came with the Treaty of Colerain which was signed on June 29, 1796, on the St. Marys between United States agents and the Creeks.

Many men from Camden County volunteered to fight under John Houstoun McIntosh, a wealthy landowner in the region, during the Patriot War in Florida in 1811.

Although New Orleans was the last major battle of the war, the skirmish at Point Peter happened even later, almost a month after the Treaty of Ghent had been signed.

The British occupation of Camden County led to the liberation of an estimated 1,485 slaves from Georgia and Florida.

[13] Camden County was on an international border until the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819 between the United States and Spain, making the Florida provinces American territory.

[citation needed] At least one federal party to "carry off" slaves was met by armed resistance on White Oak Creek off the Satilla River.

However, by 1868, Camden County's freedmen found themselves dispossessed of land they had lived and worked on since emancipation or earlier.

This signaled a return to a white political majority and the end of the Reconstruction Era concurrent with the statewide Democratic victory in 1870.

[16] The U.S. Army began to acquire land south of Crooked River in 1954 to build a military ocean terminal to ship ammunition in case of a national emergency.

Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay not only occupies the former Army terminal land, but several thousand additional acres.

Options included moving the St. Marys' airport to the Atlantic coastal site[22] which had previously been used for a rocket launch in 1965.

The area north of Waverly, as well as from west of Kingsland east to the coast of Cumberland Island, is located in the Cumberland-St. Simons sub-basin of the St. Marys-Satilla River basin.

The school offers AP classes and joint enrollment with College of Coastal Georgia and the Valdosta State University Kings Bay Campus.

In 2003, the Wildcats won the Georgia 5A Football State Championship by defeating Valdosta High School.

In 2008, the Wildcats won their second 5A State Football Championship by defeating Peachtree Ridge High School.