The township lies near the foot of Mount Macquarie and had a great affinity with nearby Bathurst in its early years, though to visit and shop in Bathurst it meant staying overnight.

Surveyor George William Evans camped at the head of Coombing Creek on May 17, 1815, after which time there was temporary occupation of the area between 1821 and 1828.

Thomas Icely, an early colonial landholder and stockbreeder, received a land grant for 560 acres near Carcoar on May 26, 1829. He had received a 2000-acre grant he called “Saltram”, near Bathurst, in 1823.

In a letter to the Surveyor-General in 1838, he requested the formation of a town at Carcoar. He also insisted that some protection be provided from lawless convicts and bushrangers who were considered a problem around Carcoar and other districts.

The proclamation of the village of Carcoar was officially notified in the Government Gazette on August 29, 1839 and the first allotments were sold in 1840 and 1841. A small court house and lock-up was completed in 1841. This earlier facility was later replaced with a more elegant and substantial judicial building on the same block of land which opened in November 1882.

The law caught up with one bushranger, Paddy Curran. He was captured at Long Swamp, not far from Carcoar, on May 18, 1841. Only weeks before, the district was in jeopardy of having martial law imposed.

This was not the only incident with bushrangers. Frank Gardiner and Jack Peisley came on the scene, though the latter was captured, sent for trial in Bathurst and hanged early in 1862. Then names like Ben Hall, John Gilbert and John O’Meally were being talked about as well.

After the capture of Gardiner, Ben Hall and his gang continued to terrorise the district. John Gilbert and John O’Meally unsuccessfully held up the Commercial Bank in Carcoar on July 13, 1863. It would be May 1865 before police caught up with Gilbert and Hall, shooting them dead in unconnected locations.

Coach services ran three days a week between Bathurst and Carcoar by the early 1850s as the population slowly grew. It would be February 1, 1879 before Carcoar became a municipality.

Barnard Stimpson was elected the first town mayor and was later elected a member of the Legislative Assembly.

Residents were pleased to hear that the railway would be going through Carcoar, but it was February 1888 before it arrived.

Because of Carcoar’s remoteness, residents requested that a hospital be provided, along with a medical officer. It did happen in 1852 and was constructed from local wooden slabs, though it was another eight years before the government declared it a public hospital. Dr Rowlands was the town’s first medical officer.

Bathurstian and architect Edward Gell designed a new hospital which was constructed during 1861 and 1862.

As the population grew, so did the churches. The congregation of St Paul’s Church of England had their house of worship designed by colonial architect Edmund Blackett. Bishop Broughton travelled to the village to lay the foundation stone on January 27, 1845, making St Paul’s the second-oldest church west of the Blue Mountains.

After using a small church for a couple of decades, a larger stone Church of the Immaculate Conception, designed by architect Edward Gell, was completed in 1870. The nearby convent was constructed in 1874.