The rainforest around Kuranda has been home to the Djabugay people for over 10,000 years. Europeans began to explore the area throughout the nineteenth century. It is believed a massacre of indigenous people took place at the location in Kuranda known as Skeleton Creek. Kuranda was first settled in 1885 and surveyed by Thomas Behan in 1888. Construction of the now famous railway from Cairns to Myola (later Cairns to Herberton) began in 1887 and the line reached Kuranda in 1891. The current railway station was built in 1915.
Although coffee was grown around Kuranda in the early twentieth century, timber was the town's primary industry for a number of years. Today Kuranda is a vibrant 'Village in the Rainforest' with tourism being the current backbone of the local economy.
The Barron Gorge Hydroelectric Power Station was built nearby in the 1960s. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Kuranda was popular with alternative life stylers, a theme that still runs through the local community today
