From the beginning, what is now Hamilton has benefited from its geographical proximity to major land and water transportation routes along the Niagara Peninsula and Lake Ontario. Its strategic importance has created, by Canadian standards, a rich military history which the city preserves.

And also from the beginning, the tension between maximizing economic growth and minimizing environmental damage was evident. The area between Burlington Bay (also known as Hamilton Harbour) and the Niagara Escarpment has been greatly altered for residential, industrial and recreational purposes. Cootes Paradise in Dundas also known as the Dundas Marsh, was a very rich wetland with plenty of fish, birds and other game. Cootes Paradise was named after Captain Thomas Coote, a British army officer of Irish extraction who was stationed in the area at the time of the American revolutionary war in the 18th century. The richness of the valley led to population, and to degradation of the marsh, although its legal protection, starting in the 1880s, and the efforts of civic officials and others, have led to it still being of great environmental importance in the 21st century.

For about a century after achieving its status as a city in 1846, Hamilton has rightly seen itself in terms of industrial production. It adopted or acquired such nicknames as the Ambitious City, Steel City and the Birmingham of Canada. However, after this period, other sectors of the economy took over and Hamilton became a post-industrial economy but failed to change its image and self-image to match. Here then follows the growth of the Hamilton until the end of the Second World War.

Even in its early days when inhabited by Indians, Hamilton's residents have had diverse ethnic, racial, national, religious and linguistic backgrounds. Since then, successive waves of immigration have crashed on Hamilton's shores, usually leaving some permanent evidence of their arrival in the names, buildings or institutions of the city.

Like most of the Americas south of the water line, the original inhabitants of the Hamilton area were Native North American Aboriginal peoples. The first European to visit what is now Hamilton was probably Étienne Brûlé in 1616. Lasalle also visited the area, a fact commemorated at a park in nearby Burlington.

In pre-became Upper Canada in 1791 and ultimately Ontario in 1867. These included Brant’s Ford (now Brantford) on the Grand River in Brant County south of Hamilton, and Brant’s Block (now Burlington) in Halton County north of Hamilton.

White United Empire Loyalists moved into the Hamilton area during and after the American War of Independence as well, dramatically boosting the population and economic development of the region between the original Upper Canadian capital at Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake) and the new one at York (now Toronto). This was to prove crucial, for the fighting between the United States and Britain was not yet over.

Administratively, the whole area was part of the Nassau District, which was renamed the Home District in 1792. Additionally, parts of the area were separately incorporated into the West Riding of York County and First Riding of Lincoln County. In 1798, most of the future Hamilton became part of Niagara District while remaining in Lincoln County.

The town of Hamilton was conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812.[6] Nathaniel Hughson, a property owner to the north, cooperated with George Hamilton to prepare a proposal for a courthouse and jail on Hamilton's property. Hamilton offered the land to the crown for the future site. James Durand, the local Member of the British Legislative Assembly, was empowered by Hughson and Hamilton to sell property holdings which later became the site of the town. As he had been instructed, Durand circulated the offers at York during a session of the Legislative Assembly and a new Gore District was established of which the Hamilton town site was a member. As such, Hamilton's future seemed to be shaped by a private collaboration of Hamilton, Hughson and Durand.

Initially the Town of Hamilton was not the dominant center of the Gore District. A permanent jail was not constructed until 1832 when a cut-stone design was completed on one of the two squares created in 1816, Prince's Square. Subsequently, the first police board and the town limits were defined by statute on February 13 of 1833.

After simmering treaty and border disputes finally erupted into the War of 1812, the Hamilton area again became a strategic area. In 1813, the British regulars and Canadian militia defeated invading American troops at the Battle of Stoney Creek which was fought in what is now a park in eastern Hamilton. Burlington Heights, adjacent to the grounds of present-day Dundurn Park and Castle, was also a site commanding the entry to Burlington Bay.

George Hamilton, a settler and local politician, established a town site in the northern portion Barton Township after the war in 1815. He kept several east-west roads which were originally Indian trails, but the north-south streets were on a regular grid pattern. Streets were designated "East" or "West" if they crossed James Street or King’s Highway No. 6. Streets were designated "North" or "South" if they crossed King Street or King’s Highway No. 8.

Gore Park, whose western boundary is King and James Streets, formed the public square for the new settlement and has remained the centre of the city ever since. The original plot of land set aside for the courthouse has had four different buildings erected on it. It was only supplanted as the court site by a move across the street in the 1990s as part of an architectural preservation project for the Post Office and Dominion Public Building.

Gore District of Upper Canada and Wentworth County were created in 1816, with Mr. Hamilton’s settlement as the seat for both. The county’s original constituent townships included the following, the territory of which became part of the amalgamated Hamilton in 2001: Ancaster (later a town), Barton, Binbrook (later one half of Glanbrook), Glanford (later the other half of Glanbrook) and Saltfleet (later the town and city of Stoney Creek). Seneca and Brant Townships were also original constituents of the county but later became part of Brant County.

During the first half of the 19th century, Mr. Hamilton’s settlement in Barton Township steadily increased status at the expense of Dundas. Growth was aided in 1827 by a channel cut to link Burlington Bay directly with Lake Ontario, thus improving its marine transportation. George Hamilton’s settlement was incorporated as a police village in 1833. In comparison, the Desjardins Canal to Dundas was at best an incomplete success. The physical structures, with living interpreters, of these pioneer days are preserved at Westfield Heritage Centre.

As railway fever raced across North America, Hamilton prematurely got in the act with the promotion of various paper lines in the 1830s. This included Allan Napier MacNab’s Hamilton and Port Dover Railway which, although chartered in 1835, did not actually lay any track until the mid-1850s under a different corporate name. MacNab completed Dundurn Castle, his stately home, in 1835. A boy soldier in the War of 1812, he led Gore militia to crush insurgents in the Rebellion of 1837 for which he was knighted the following year.