Colonel Henry Ridgley surveyed the land around Savage Mill and nearby Annapolis Junction, Maryland in 1685, naming the tract "Ridgely's Forrest".

When the textile industry was in its heyday, Savage was an important manufacturing center, its mills harnessing the water power on the falls of the Little and Middle Patuxent rivers.

In 1822, he and his associates, the Williams brothers, chartered the Savage Manufacturing Company, purchasing 900 acres (360 ha) of the White property for $6,666.67.

Cotton was shipped cheaply from Southern ports and hauled overland by mule and oxen teams to the mills before rail transportation served Savage.

A spur of the B&O was laid to the Savage factory in 1887, and it was at this time that the famous Bollman Truss Railroad Bridge was moved to its present site from another location.

Beloved by railroad buffs, the iron truss bridge is the only one of its type in the world, and, along with the Savage Mill, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Savage post office opened on January 13, 1836, on "Yankee Hill" at the corner of Washington and Foundry streets with Amos Adams Williams as postmaster.

[10] In 1929, Dr. Wolman issued a recommendation that did not pass, to dam and flood the Patuxent River Valley around Savage for a dedicated water source.

Factory work at the mill was almost exclusively for white workers with exceptions of black apprentices at the forges in the antebellum era.

[13] In 1976, county executive Edward L. Cochran convened a waste task force that reviewed submissions for a 538-acre landfill at route One and 32 owned by Realty Trust and Chase Manhattan Mortgage, with commercial dumping sites at the Savage quarry.