The extreme end of the western tip of the district and the peninsula, the locality called Tekir, is the location of the ancient city of Knidos.

There is an ongoing debate on whether or not this location was the original site of the ancient city, a number of sources claiming that until the mid-4th century BCE, Knidos was halfway along the peninsula, near the present-day district center.

According to Herodotus, during the Persian invasions in 540 BC, the Knidians had sought to dig a canal at this spot as a defensive measure and in order to transform their territory into an island.

Datça has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csa),[7] with very hot, dry summers, and mild, wet winters.

Reşadiye was the original administrative core when the town was renamed Datça and turned into a district center in 1928, before it was moved to İskele quarter.

[9] The second and larger area of good land is in the middle of the peninsula southwest of the median isthmus dividing the two halves and centered on the town of Datça.

The region's promising potential was noted already in the 1880s by the hydrographer Thomas Abel B. Spratt in the following terms: The plain and valley of Datça is very fertile, having fine groves of olive and valonia, and of almonds and other fruit trees, with abundance of water, if properly utilized.

[10]A point of note on the general settlement pattern of these villages is that the locations chosen were never in the immediate coastline, but always at a mile's distance or more from the sea and at a relatively safe altitude on the slopes of a hill.

The reason was from times immemorial was the fear of pirates, advantaged as they were by the intricate geology of shores of southwestern Turkey and of the many islands and islets that are its natural extensions, in an environment not unlike that of the Caribbean Sea.