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Calvert County Guide
Located
forty-six miles from Washington, DC., Calvert county is the smallest county
in Southern Maryland, making up only 219 square miles. Calvert County
is a peninsula , surrounded by the Chesapeake Bay on the east and
the Patuxent River on the west. Calvert is only nine
miles wide, at its widest point, and stretches only thirty-five miles from
its northernmost tip at the Anne Arundel county line to its southern tip at
Solomons. Calvert County is known for its massive cliffs made of
clay, gravel, and sand, which travel 135 feet upward from the shoreline.
Even though Calvert County wasn't established until 1654,
Native people were living here long before that. The first group to
occupy today's Calvert County were the Piscataway Indians. John Smith
was the first Western man to lay eyes on the land. In 1650, Lord
Baltimore called this new county Charles, and that name stuck until October
20, 1654, when the Puritans took over the government. This date then
became the official date of the establishment of Calvert County.
Puritans first named it Patuxent County, after the Indian word meaning
"place where tobacco grows".
 When the Calvert's regained possession of
the land in 1658 they renamed it Calvert County. The land originally
extended north into Frederick County, and included Prince George's County,
Charles County, and parts of Anne Arundel and St. Mary's counties.
With the establishment of PG county in 1696, a lot of that land was lost,
and Calvert County became what it is today.
Calvert County was isolated from the rest of Southern
Maryland until 1950, when a bridge over the Patuxent River, now Rt. 231,
connected Calvert County with Benedict in Charles County. The Thomas
Johnson Bridge came in 1977 and connected Calvert County, in Solomons, to
St. Mary's County Rt. 4.
Calvert County's original county seat was a town called Battle Town built by
 Robert Brooke in 1652. Later this town was called Calvert Town and
remained the county seat until 1725 when it was moved to Prince Frederick.
Here, in Prince Frederick, the first courthouse was built. This
courthouse was burnt and destroyed by the British during the War of 1812.
A second courthouse was built and that too was burnt down in 1882. In
1915, the present courthouse was built. Prince Frederick has few old
buildings due to these two fires.
Today Calvert County experiences mild summers and winters
with temperatures averaging 36 - 74 degrees. It is home to many
postcard towns, parks, and landscape, as well as historical landmarks. |
