The Towsers Huts, 3 km south of town but currently inaccessible to the public, are ruins of very simple colonial dwellings from around 1870.

[3] The Cobar area is part of the traditional territory of the Wongaibon people (within the Ngiyampaa language group associated with the arid plains and rocky hill country of the Central West area of NSW bordered by the Lachlan, Darling-Barwon and Bogan rivers).

The name ‘Cobar’ is derived from a Ngiyampaa word – variously transcribed as kubbur, kuparr, gubarr or cuburra – for a water-hole and quarry where pigments of ochre, kaolin and blue and green copper minerals were mined for ceremonial use.

[6][7] The Mount Grenfell Historic Site located north-west of Cobar is an important traditional meeting place with ceremonial significance.

Extensive rock art at the site contains ochre and kaolin paintings of human and animal figures as well as hand stencils.

By the mid-1860s back stations such as ‘Booroomugga’ and ‘Buckwaroon’ had been established in the Cobar locality (within the Warrego Pastoral District).

[9] In September 1870 three contract well-sinkers, Charles Campbell, Thomas Hartman and George Gibb, were traveling south from Bourke to the Lachlan River.

They had engaged two Aboriginal men, Frank and Boney, to guide them via the permanent watering places in the dry country between the rivers.

On their journey further south the well-sinkers stopped at a shanty operated by Henry Kruge (near to the future site of Gilgunnia).

Kruge’s wife, Sidwell, was from Cornwall and her family had emigrated to South Australia in the late-1840s and mined copper ore at Burra.

Sidwell Kruge's assessment was confirmed when her husband smelted some of the ore samples in his blacksmith's forge.

[10][4] In partnership with Bourke businessman Joseph Becker, Campbell, Hartman and Gibb took up a mineral conditional purchase of 40 acres at the locality.

[19] In March 1881 the settlement at Cobar was described as “large and scattered, as mining towns generally are, composed chiefly of huts and cottages, which lie about in all directions and cover an extensive area of ground”.

[21] Several fine heritage buildings from the late 1880s/early 1900s settlement are still in existence, including the Great Western Hotel (1898), claimed to have the longest verandah (at 91 metres) in New South Wales,[22] the Cobar Post Office (1885), the Cobar Court House (1887) and Court House Hotel (1895) in Barton Street, as well as the Cobar Heritage and Visitor Information Centre, located in the former Mines Office (1910).

On Hillston Road southeast out of town is Fort Bourke Hill, which affords a view of the town, as well as the historic Towser's Huts, a series of stone miners' cottages dating back as early as the 1890s, possibly even the 1870s, and built by an Italian miner by the name of Antonio Tozzi.

It also became the regional centre for nearby mining villages, such as Elouera, Illewong, Wrightville, Dapville, and The Peak, and some further away such as Canbelego, Mount Drysdale, Nymagee and Shuttleton.

The area of Cobar also includes the now empty sites of the former villages of Wrightville and Dapville,[37] and the informal settlement of Cornish Town.

It became a significant local spot for miners as well as a common meeting place for groups and clubs in the area.

In August 2014 a fire engulfed the building and resulted in the death of a firefighter who died of his injuries at Dubbo Base Hospital.

The Cobar economy relies heavily on trade with the local mines and their employees, and consequently on world metal prices and hence is subject to great fluctuations.

During 2008, after a fall of 75% in world zinc prices, one local mine cut 540 of its 655 jobs, with flow-on effects felt by many other businesses.