Welcome to Cooktown!
Cooktown is a small coastal town in tropical north Queensland. In 1770 Captain James Cook landed on the banks of the Endeavour River repairing his ship Endeavour, after it ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef. A century later, in 1873, it became the port for the Palmer River Goldfields. Today it is billed as the gateway to the wilderness. It offers Mountains, Outback terrain, as well as some of the top scuba diving around. Although it still has well developed facilities, the town has more of a frontier feel, as is vastly different to the resort towns further south along the coast.
Cooktown is a coastal town and locality in the Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia. Cooktown is at the mouth of the Endeavour River, on Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland where James Cook beached his ship, the Endeavour, for repairs in 1770. Both the town and Mount Cook (431 metres or 1,415 feet) which rises up behind the town were named after James Cook.Cooktown is one of the few large towns in the Cape York Peninsula and was founded on 25 October 1873 as a supply port for the goldfields along the Palmer River. It was called "Cook's Town" until 1 June 1874. In the 2016 census the locality of Cooktown had a population of 2,631 people.