[2] It is part of the Portland–South Portland–Biddeford, Maine metropolitan statistical area, situated at the head of Merrymeeting Bay.

Richmond is located adjacent to the 2,019 acre state-owned and managed Steve Powell Wildlife Management Area on Swan Island,[3] a wildlife sanctuary and tourist area listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

[5] The tract of land which comprises Richmond and Gardiner was purchased in 1649 from the Abenaki Indians by Christopher Lawson.

The site of Richmond, as well as neighboring Swan Island, is believed by historians to have served as a summer settlement for the Abenaki.

Named for Ludovic Stewart, 1st Duke of Richmond, the fort included a blockhouse, trading post, chapel, officers' and soldiers' quarters, all surrounded by a palisade.

[7] In 1722 during the Dummer's War, following the battle at Arrowsic, Maine, Fort Richmond was attacked in a three-hour siege by warriors from Norridgewock.

On August 19, 1724, a militia of 208 soldiers departed Fort Richmond under command of captains Jeremiah Moulton and Johnson Harmon, traveling up the Kennebec in 17 whaleboats to sack Norridgewock.

The Embargo of 1807 crippled the port's economy, bankrupted merchants and created a recession which lingered through the War of 1812.

With the arrival of steamboats in the 1830s, Richmond boomed as a shipbuilding and trade center on the navigable Kennebec River estuary.

Its peak years were between 1835 and 1857, endowing the town with a wealth of fine Greek Revival architecture.

People of Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish heritage emigrated to the United States during World War II to settle along the Kennebec Valley.

In the 1950s and 1960s, there was also a large influx of White Russian emigres, who earlier fled the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.