Originally called White Mountain Notch, it became known to European settlers when found by Timothy Nash in 1771.

[2][3] The turnpike and later Portland and Ogdensburg Railroad through Crawford Notch opened a new route through the White Mountains for settlers of the area to the northwest to reach Conway on the way to the trading ports on the coast.

[4][need quotation to verify] A well-documented historic event within the notch was a rockslide that killed the entire Samuel Willey family in August 1826.

The family fled their home during the storm to a prepared shelter but were buried by the slide and died in a mass of stone and rubble.

[5] In the Carroll portion of the notch, the Appalachian Mountain Club has built and operates the Highland Center Lodge and Conference Center (on the site of the Crawford House Hotel, a 19th-century grand hotel that burned in 1972), and has renovated the Queen Anne style Victorian-era Crawford Notch Maine Central train depot as a bookstore.