Bathurst has a historic city centre with many ornate buildings remaining from the New South Wales gold rush in the mid to late 19th century.

[5] The government surveyor, George Evans, was the first European to sight the Bathurst Plains in 1813, following the first successful British crossing of the Blue Mountains in the same year.

This road was 3.7 metres (12 ft) wide and 163.3 kilometres (101+1⁄2 mi) long, built between 18 July 1814 and 14 January 1815 using 5 freemen, 30 convict labourers and 8 soldiers as guards.

[9][10] In 1819, frontier conflicts between local Wiradjuri groups and encroaching settlers began when Aboriginal people were shot and others mauled by the colonists' dogs.

[15] Bathurst's position as a key transit point for transporting gold to Sydney made it an attractive target for bushrangers, causing a major problem for the authorities.

In October 1863, Hall and four other members of his gang raided Bathurst, robbing a jeweller's shop, bailing up the Sportsmans Arms Hotel, and engaging the police in a shootout.

From that time, the town became an important railway centre with workshops, crew base with locomotive depot and track and signal engineering offices.

The heritage listed Bathurst Courthouse, a predominant landmark of the city centre, was constructed in 1880 based on designs by the New South Wales Colonial and Government architects, James Barnet and Walter Liberty Vernon.

The town in 1885 was a hub for stores such as E.G. Webb & Co. with supplies and distribution occurring throughout large parts of western NSW and into Queensland and South Australia.

Eventually a waterworks was built to the south of the town on the river with the water pumped through piping laid progressively to the businesses and private dwellings.

In 1931, work started on the 1,700 ML Winburndale Dam project to gravity feed water through a wood stave pipe laid to the town.

Motor cars were becoming common in the early 20th century and the need for road service patrols commenced in 1927, provided by the NRMA using a motorcycle/sidecar response vehicle.

Bathurst Aerodrome was opened in 1942, initially to benefit the war effort providing parking for aircraft overflowing from Richmond air force base.

[citation needed] By 1906, he was growing pears, apples and asparagus and experimenting with canning and preserving fruit and vegetables, eventually opening a small cannery in 1926.

[3][34] The city has had a moderate population growth of 1.29% year-on-year averaged over the five years until 2019, making Bathurst the tenth fastest-growing urban area in New South Wales outside Sydney.

[3] This growth over recent years has resulted in increased urban development, including retail precincts, sporting facilities, housing estates and expanding industrial areas.

The south is more complex geology with siltstones, sandstones, greywacke, shales and chert, basalt and granite intrusions and embedded volcanic and limestones.

[43] In winter, light to moderate snowfalls occur each year on the high country around Bathurst, while snow is relatively rare in the city itself due to its low elevation at a northern latitude.

[44] Bathurst is relatively dry year round, as it lay in a rain shadow on account of its sheltered valley location flanked by hills and ranges on all sides.

Bathurst is one of only a handful of Australian towns to have recorded a sub-freezing maximum (others include Guyra and Nimmitabel), while at least one month has remained entirely free of air frosts, a trait common in broadly-temperate Laurasian (European, Asian, and North American) climates.

[3] Local government was trialled in the new Colony with a 'Bathurst and Carcoar District Council' established on 12 August 1843,[24]: 66  Bathurst was proclaimed a town in 1852 and incorporated as a borough in 1862, next a municipality in 1883,[34] then gazetted a city in on 20 March 1885.

[79] Bathurst is currently within the federal electoral district of Calare which includes a large part of western NSW from Lithgow in the east to Tullamore in the west.

[34] In 1982, Clyde Engineering opened a railway component facility in Kelso, initially producing electrical equipment under licence from Hitachi.

Originally established to study most facets of agriculture in the early growth years of the western inland, work included dairy, pigs, vegetable, cereal plantings, and fruit trees.

On 16 April 1938, Mount Panorama attracted 20,000 spectators to its first race, The Australian Tourist Trophy and in 2006 the crowd figure reached 194,000 for the 3-day Bathurst 1000 event.

This museum was built to encourage visitors to the circuit all year round and includes motor cycles and cars, representing the racing history of Bathurst.

There are over 70 different sporting groups and organisations in the region from the Academy of Dance, croquet, aero, pony clubs, through to the football, rugby, cricket and cycling.

Organisations that support the various arts are well catered for in Bathurst they include the Mitchell Conservatorium which was the NSW's first regional, community-based, pre-tertiary and non-profit music centre, it was established in May 1978.

[116] The Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre (BMEC) is a new purpose built building completed in 1999 that provides a venue for local and visiting performances.

[124] Western Sydney University has a clinical education facility, housed within Bathurst Hospital, open since June 2010 for its fourth year medical students.