Dorchester County is a county located in the U.S. state of Maryland. At the 2020 census, the population was 32,531. Its county seat is Cambridge. The county was formed in 1669 and named for the Earl of Dorset, a family friend of the Calverts (the founding family of the Maryland colony).
Dorchester County comprises the Cambridge, MD Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is also included in the Salisbury-Cambridge, MD-DE Combined Statistical Area. It is located on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Dorchester County is the largest county by total area on the Eastern Shore. It is bordered by the Choptank River to the north, Talbot County to the northwest, Caroline County to the northeast, Wicomico County to the southeast, Sussex County, Delaware, to the east, and the Chesapeake Bay to the west. Dorchester County uses the slogan, "The Heart of Chesapeake Country", due to its geographical location and the heart-like shape of the county on a map.
History
Many residents of Dorchester County have historically been watermen and farmers. The Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries provide harvests of crabs, oysters and many fish species to both commercial and recreational fishermen. Dorchester County was the birthplace of Harriet Tubman, who escaped from slavery and afterward worked to guide other refugee slaves to freedom in the North.
Dorchester County has been hit by two deadly tornadoes. The first occurred on June 23, 1944, in Cambridge, where two people were killed and 33 were injured. The other was on May 8, 1984, in Hurlock, where one death and six injuries were reported. Both storms caused between 500,000 and 5 million dollars of damage.
Politics, government and law
Dorchester County operates under the charter home rule form of government, and the affairs of the county are managed by five county council members. Each is elected from a single-member district defined within the county. Meetings of the county council are held weekly. The agenda and the minutes of each week's proceedings are public record.
The white population of Dorchester has historically voted very conservatively. Along with rock-ribbed Unionist Garrett County, located in Appalachia, its white majority was one of only two Maryland counties to vote for Barry Goldwater in 1964. During the following election, Dorchester was the only county in the state where the segregationist George Wallace outpolled either Nixon or Humphrey. In the late 20th century, white conservatives in the South shifted from the Democratic to the Republican Party. Since then the only Democratic presidential nominee to carry Dorchester County was southern native son Bill Clinton in 1996.
The county has trended less conservative in recent years, with Democrat Barack Obama coming within five percentage points of beating Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election; Obama won nationally. In earlier times, unlike highly secessionist Wicomico, Worcester, Queen Anne's and Cecil counties, Dorchester was a swing county in the late 19th century due to the voting power of its freedman population, who strongly supported the Republican Party. The conservative whites voted Democratic for William Jennings Bryan in 1908, after Maryland had passed laws raising barriers to voter registration among blacks, resulting in a dramatic drop in their voting until after passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s.
Law enforcement
The county is policed by the Dorchester County Sheriff's Office (DSO), the Maryland State Police, and the DNR Police. The DSO is a full service agency, headed by Sheriff James W. Phillips Jr. since December 2002.
Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (45%) is water. It is the largest county in Maryland by area.
Climate
Dorchester has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa) according to the Köppen climate classification. The Trewartha climate classification.has only the area near the bay as Cf and the remainder of the county as oceanic (Do.) Average monthly temperatures in Cambridge range from 36.1 °F in January to 78.4 °F in July.
Adjacent counties
Caroline County (north and northeast) Sussex County, Delaware (east) Talbot County (north) Somerset County (southeast) Saint Mary's County (southwest) Wicomico County (east and southeast) Calvert County (west)
National protected area
Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge
Demographics
Dorchester County is sparsely populated and is the least densely populated county in Maryland. The largest town is Cambridge with a population of 12,326 as of the 2010 census. Much of this county is made up of marshlands, forest, and farmland.