Historically, the Minnesota River supported the county's fur trading, lumbering, and farming industries in the 19th century.

Today, Scott County experiences a growing mix of commercial, industrial, and housing development, but is still primarily rural.

Scott County is home to several historical, scenic, and entertainment destinations including Canterbury Park, The Landing, Minnesota's Largest Candy Store, Elko Speedway, Mystic Lake Casino run by the Shakopee-Mdewakanton Dakota; the Renaissance Festival, and Valleyfair Amusement Park.

Scott County was first inhabited by two bands of the Santee Sioux (Dakota) Indians, the Mdewakanton and Wahpeton.

They had many trails leading to these settlements and to the Red River Valley in the North, and the Prairie du Chien to the Southeast.

The area of Scott County, as well as much of southern Minnesota, was opened for settlement by two treaties signed at Mendota and Traverse des Sioux, in 1851 and 1853.

These treaties removed the Dakota Indians to reservations in upper Minnesota.Scott County was established and organized by an Act passed in the legislature on March 5, 1853.

When the railroads came to Minnesota, they became the primary mode of transportation, and eventually highways were developed along the ox cart trails between the communities.

Now mostly farmland, it was an oak savanna and a mixture of grass and clusters of trees that grew parallel to the river valley.

[15] In its early history Scott County was heavily Democratic due to being largely German Catholic and opposed to the pietistic Scandinavian Lutheran Republican Party of that era.

It would never vote Republican until Theodore Roosevelt swept every Minnesota county in 1904[17] but anti-Woodrow Wilson feeling from World War I caused the county to shift overwhelmingly to Warren G. Harding in 1920 before swinging to Robert La Follette, coreligionist Al Smith and fellow “wet” Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1936 the county's isolationism gave a powerful vote to William Lemke’s Union Party,[18] and apart from Harry Truman’s Farm Belt appeal in the 1948 election Scott County would turn Republican until another Catholic nominee, John F. Kennedy, returned it to the Democratic ranks.

Although a conservative stronghold in modern times, the suburban voters of Scott County, like those elsewhere, tend to be more liberal on social issues.

For example, while Mitt Romney handily won Scott County in 2012, voters also rejected a proposed amendment to the Minnesota constitution that would have banned same-sex marriage.