There is a small 30–50 foot (10–15 m) high ridge near Kingsville and Leamington in the southern part of the county, and large marshland near Hillman Marsh Conservation Area, and Point Pelee National Park.

Temperatures and conditions change frequently during the winter months, with short periods of both bitter cold or mild weather.

Like the surrounding Midwestern United States, thunderstorms and severe weather are more frequent during the spring and summer months.

[citation needed] Lower down the river, lands were occupied by native people known as Wyandot or Huron, around the Jesuit Catholic Mission of Bois Blanc (French for White Wood), opposite the island of the same name.

The Mission was eventually abandoned and re-established closer to what became Sandwich Township after the British took over the French territory following the Seven Years' War.

When farmers arrived, they encountered difficulty in trying to clear the extremely thick forests that covered Essex County.

The farmers grew to "hate" the trees, and chopped them down, starved them from nourishment by cutting deep gashes in the bark, and burned them to clear the way to get to the fertile soils underneath.

The fires were so intense, that the reddish glow could be seen from Fort Chicago, 300 miles (500 km) away, as millions of cords of wood burned.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the French ventured east along the south shore of Lake Saint Clair and settled in the present-day areas of Belle River (Belle-Rivière), Rochester, Tecumseh, Saint-Joachim and Stoney Point (Pointe-aux-Roches).

The British built Fort Malden near Amherstburg, opposite Bois Blanc Island, separating the British military presence from the more heavily populated area of Sandwich upstream, and positioned strategically to control the entrance of the river from Lake Erie and Lake Huron to the north.

After the American Revolution, and the War of 1812 (1812–1815), which also was a confrontation over the northern border, some people continued to migrate north to the area.

Settlers also arrived from the east seeking land, traveling by Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River of Lower Canada.

The British Court made land available for settlement, provided that the colonist complete certain improvements within a year and that it not be used for speculation.

Settlement continued: on January 1, 1800, an Act for the Better Division of the Province established the Townships of Rochester, Mersea, Gosfield, Maidstone, Sandwich and Malden.

The village of Maidstone was the centre of the Irish community, and an area known as the "Scotch Colony" appeared along the shore of Lake St. Clair to the north.

In the 19th-century Black Americans came to Essex county by way of Pelee's Point, Gosfield (now Kingsville), Colchester, Sandwich, and Windsor.

Many of the descendants of the fugitives moved back to the United States to support the Northerners (Union Army) in the American Civil War, (1861–1865), or to reconnect with family after emancipation.

Also noticeable in some farmers' fields are oil pumps, particularly near Belle River and Leamington, in the northern and eastern parts of the county, respectively.

[10] County government is responsible for issues that include transportation, community and social services (e.g. homes for the aged, child care, social housing), libraries, planning, emergency management coordination and corporate-wide business such as finance and taxation policies, general corporate policy and labour relations.

[14] Major products of the greenhouse industry, in addition to tomatoes, are peppers, cannabis, cucumbers, roses, and other flowers.