Roorkee was the capital of a Moghul Mahal (similar to a present-day Pargana) during the time of Akbar, as is referred in Ain-e-Akbari, authored by Abul Fazal.
During the 18th century, it came under the rule of Landhaura state, until the death of its Bargujar king, Raja Ramdaval Dev in 1813. It later became a part of the territories of the British East India Company.
Before 1840, the city was a small village of mud houses on the banks of the Solani rivulet. Digging work on the Upper Ganges Canal formally began in April 1842, under the aegis of Proby Cautley, a British officer. Soon, Roorkee developed into a town. The canal, which was formally opened on 8 April 1854, irrigated over 767,000 acres (3,100 km²) in 5,000 villages.
Another factor that contributed to the city's growth was the inception of the Roorkee College, which has its origin in the classes started in 1845 to train local youth to assist in the civil-engineering work of the Upper Ganges Canal. This was to become the first engineering college established in India. On November 25, 1847, the college was formally constituted, through a proposal by the Sir James Thomason, Lt. Governor of North Western Province (1843–53). After his death in 1853, the college was rechristened as Thomason College of Civil Engineering. The college later upgraded to University of Roorkee in 1949; on September 21, 2001, through an Act of parliament, it was made one of the Indian Institutes of Technology, IIT Roorkee.
India's first aqueduct was constructed over the Solani river, near Roorkee, part of the Ganges Canal project, which itself was India's first irrigation work in North India, started by the British. The Ganges Canal led to another first for Roorkee — India's first steam engine, Mary Lind, (specially shipped from England moved on rails in India) ran in Roorkee on December 22, 1851, between Roorkee and Piran Kaliyar, two years before the first passenger train ran from Bombay to Thane in
