Prior to European settlement, the area around Mareeba was inhabited by the
Muluridji people, who spoke a
Guugu Yalandji dialect. They maintained a hunter/gatherer existence in the area between
Mount Carbine, Mareeba, Rumula (near
Julatten) and Woodville (near
Canoona), mainly concentrated between
Biboohra and
Mount Molloy. In the local Aboriginal language, Mareeba means meeting of the waters - referring to the point at which the Barron River is joined by Granite Creek. On 26 May 1875,
James Venture Mulligan became the first European officially to see the future site of Mareeba when he rode up the eastern bank of the Barron River, and passed the junctions of Emerald Creek and Granite Creek. The Mareeba area was first settled by Europeans in 1877 by
John Atherton, who arrived with cattle at Emerald End, which is just north of the town today. Mareeba quickly became a busy coach stop for
Cobb & Co on the road from
Port Douglas to
Herberton. When the
railway arrived in 1893, Mareeba grew into a busy town. Mareeba Post Office opened on 25 August 1893 (a
receiving office named Granite Creek had been open from 1891). A Mareeba Diggings Post Office opened by 1893 and closed in 1905. Mareeba Provisional School opened on 28 August 1893 with 46 students under head teacher Denis Horan; by December that year, there were 96 students. It became Mareeba State School on 1 January 1899. In 1940, it was designated a Rural School, meaning that it taught more practical skills needed by farming families, such as agriculture for boys and needlework for girls. St Thomas of Villanova Catholic School opened on 1 January 1909. The Mareeba parish of the Roman Catholic Vicariate Apostolic of Cooktown (now the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cairns) was established in 1911. In 1942, Mareeba acquired a rail ambulance to transport patients by train. It was one of the last
rail ambulances in Queensland with its last patient transported in 1983. From 1942 to 1945 during
World War II, up to 10,000 Australian and US service personnel used
Mareeba Airfield as a staging post for battles in
New Guinea and the
South West Pacific theatre. The Americans referred to it as Hoevet Field in honour of Major Dean Carol "Pinky" Hoevet who was killed on 16 August 1942. Units that were based at Mareeba included
No. 5 Squadron of the
Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF),
No. 100 Squadron RAAF, the Australian 33rd Light Anti-Aircraft Battery, the
19th Bomb Group of the
United States Army Air Forces ( USAAF), the
43rd Bomb Group USAAF and the
8th Fighter Group USAAF. For a period of two years during World War II, Mareeba State School was taken over by the army, so St Thomas’ Catholic School accommodated the entire school population of Mareeba. Mareeba is also home to an
Albanian Australian community that dates from the interwar period. On 24 January 2006, St Stephen's Catholic College opened after a nearly 10-year approval process regarding the provision of Catholic secondary education. In October 2011, most of the land (209 hectares; 516 acres) of the former state farm / research station at
Kairi was sold by the
Queensland Government, retaining only 26 hectares (65 acres). The sale of the land was to fund the establishment of the Agri-Science Hub at Peters Street in Mareeba. The hub focusses on agricultural research and development, together with education and training.
James Cook University is a partner of the hub, researching
tropical agriculture,
aquaculture and
biosecurity. The hub opened on 16 December 2011. In the
2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum, 85% of Mareeba's residents voted No which was one of the largest proportion of No votes in the country. ==Demographics==