The land at Kent Narrows was once a marsh, and the straits were once shallow enough that Maryland colonists called the area "The Wading Place." After the last ice age, global warming raised sea level worldwide, melting icecaps, flooding the ancient Susquehanna Valley, and creating the Chesapeake Bay, a process that continues today. Geologists estimate that sea level is rising about a foot every century. Kent Narrows has also changed as the bay’s bounty began to be commercially harvested and commercial fishermen increasingly used the passage. The channel was dredged in 1950 to allow larger boats through, and the dredge spoil was used to fill the surrounding marshlands. The restaurants and processing houses there stand on this reclaimed land. Today the waterway is largely man made, maintained by continued dredging and shoreline bulkheading to keep it wide and deep for work and pleasure boats.