Within six months of its establishment in October 1873 there were 20 restaurants, 12 large and 20 smaller stores, 6 butchers, 5 bakers, 3 tinsmiths, and chemists, fancy-goods shops, watchmakers, bootmakers and saddlers, conducting businesses in the town; 65 publican's licenses had been issued for the Cooktown- Palmer River district, with 30 more applied for by April 1874.

By the late 1880s it was the centre not only of a thriving mining district (boosted by the 1887 discovery of tin along the Annan River), but also of pearling, beche-de-mer, and pastoral activity.

In reaction to public concern, surveyor James Reid was instructed to formally survey the Cooktown Cemetery, a reserve of 15 acres (6.1 ha) south of the town near the Two-Mile Creek, and this was completed by early November 1874.

In April 1891 the trustees were commended by the community for improvements to the Cemetery avenue and flower beds, and visitors were warned against allowing dogs into the grounds.

[1] The cemetery bears testimony to the diverse nationalities who came to Cooktown and the Palmer goldfields in the late 19th century, and includes the graves of French, Chinese, English, Swedish, Germans and South Sea Islanders.

Cooktown itself had a substantial "Chinatown" - storekeepers, boardinghouse keepers, restaurateurs – and in 1887 the local Chinese community erected a Shrine in the cemetery to honour their dead.

However, under Council control, responsibility for burials was left for many years to local undertakers, who appear to have worked to two different cemetery layouts, causing considerable confusion.

Some community interpretative work has been undertaken in recent years, with a large sign erected at the entrance to the cemetery and several of the more historically significant graves decorated.

There are some trees in this section, mostly self-sown, but a number of frangipanni – possibly remnants of a tree-lined drive – and coconut palms, appear to be early planting.

These tracks and two secondary pathways divide the cemetery into denominational sections – Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Church of England, Methodist – and there are also Jewish, Buddhist, Islamic, Aboriginal and "pagan" groupings.

Headstones mostly survive for the social elite and professional classes – the medical, religious and administrative group, along with successful Cooktown merchants, businesspersons and civic leaders.

[1] Other graves of note include those of Mrs Mary Watson, who died of thirst escaping hostile Aborigines on Lizard Island in 1881; Albert Ross Hovell, a prominent mariner and son of the explorer William Hovell, but known more specifically for his involvement in 'blackbirding'; Elizabeth Jardine, whose husband John founded Somerset on Cape York Peninsula, and whose sons were pioneer cattlemen in Northern Australia; Mother Mary de Sales Meagher, founder of the Sisters of Mercy Convent in Cooktown; Albert McLaren, founder of the New Guinea Mission in 1891; Brinsley Guise Sheridan, police magistrate at Cooktown and Cardwell; Rev.

[1] To the west of the grassy section is a small grouping of Jewish gravestones and some Aboriginal graves, marked with sapling branches at each corner, and north of these is the Chinese Shrine.

[1] The Chinese shrine comprises a rectangular concrete platform approximately 6 metres (20 ft) long by 3 metres (9.8 ft) wide lying in a north–south direction, at the southern end of which, and facing to the north, is an upright concrete memorial tablet, on which are written in large script the Chinese characters Tjin Ju Tsai: "Respect the dead as if they are present".

That to the right gives the date the shrine was erected: 'a lucky spring day in the third month of the thirteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Kuang Hsu (1874–1908), Ch'ing dynasty'.

Beyond the northern end of the platform and approximately 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) away are two ceremonial fire-boxes, constructed of fire bricks rendered with cement.

The open tops permitted paper prayers and temple "money" to be burned, assisting the spirits on their journey to a life beyond this world.

Within this regrowth area is located a clay brick-pitched well, and beyond this a rectangular arrangement of shallow ditches, remnants of an irrigation channelling system purported to be of Chinese origin.

The place has been in use as a cemetery since 1874, and the several thousand interments provide rare evidence of the diversity of national, ethnic and religious groups which shaped the development of Cooktown and district in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Cooktown Cemetery survives as a good example of its type, with denominational divisions, Christian graves aligned to the east, and a variety of headstones and monuments illustrating changing public attitudes to commemoration of the dead.

It is valued as a strong and unique illustration of the special history of Cooktown, and is considered a major Far North Queensland tourist attraction.