[10] Kineshemsky District is located in the northeast of Ivanovo Oblast, mostly on the right bank (south at this point) of the Volga River.

Archaeological records suggest that human settlement in Kineshemsky District began in the second or third century BC by a people of the Fatyanovo–Balanovo culture migrating from the west.

By the first millennium AD the area was inhabited by the Meriya tribe of the Volga-Finns, raising cattle and beginning to build fortified towns.

[2] By the end of the first millennium a burial-mound culture of Krivachi Slavs had moved in with more advanced cattle-breeding and agricultural practices.

[7] Prior to the adoption of the Law #145-OZ On the Administrative-Territorial Division of Ivanovo Oblast in December 2010, the town of Navoloki was also incorporated separately from the district with the same status as Kineshma.