The Colony of Avalon was established at Ferryland in 1621 through the efforts of Sir George Calvert, later Lord Baltimore. Calvert obtained a charter for territory on Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula and sent Governor Edward Wynne with settlers to build a permanent base for the migratory cod fishery. They constructed houses, a substantial residence, a forge, stores, waterfront facilities, gardens, defenses, and one of the earliest planned English streets in North America.

Ferryland's settlers entered a coastal world already known to Indigenous peoples and long used by European seasonal fishing crews. The colony depended on cod, imported provisions, skilled trades, servants, and Atlantic shipping. Calvert invested heavily and visited with his family in 1627. As a Catholic in a Protestant kingdom, he hoped the colony might offer greater security for his household and co-religionists, though Avalon remained governed within English imperial structures and its labor system was hierarchical.

Harsh winters, warfare, contested fisheries, and the difficulty of governing from across the Atlantic weakened Calvert's commitment. He left Newfoundland in 1629 and sought a warmer colony, a process that led his family toward Maryland. Ferryland nevertheless survived under later proprietors, including the Kirke family, and became an important fishing and commercial community. Households processed cod, traded with Europe and New England, cultivated limited crops, and maintained waterfront buildings exposed to fire, storms, and military attack.

French forces destroyed much of Ferryland in 1696 during imperial warfare, and later occupation and construction covered the early colony. The community endured, but the seventeenth-century streets and foundations disappeared beneath gardens, fields, and buildings. Systematic archaeological work beginning in the late twentieth century uncovered stone structures, cobbled surfaces, drains, ceramics, glass, coins, tools, food remains, and thousands of other objects. These finds transformed Avalon from a documentary footnote into one of the best-preserved early English colonial sites in North America.

The Colony of Avalon Foundation now combines excavation, conservation, research, and public interpretation. Visitors encounter foundations and active archaeology rather than a fully reconstructed town, making the process of recovering evidence part of the experience. The site's significance extends beyond George Calvert. It illuminates fishing labor, household consumption, transatlantic supply, religion, gender, servants, warfare, and adaptation to Newfoundland's environment. Ferryland also complicates simple national origin stories because its settlement belonged to a mobile Atlantic fishery and an English colonial project that later connected directly to Maryland. Ongoing study continues to identify individual households, trades, diets, and Atlantic connections from material discarded nearly four centuries ago.