Anticline folding of the layers of sandstone can be seen along the cliffs of the beach, and Macleans Reserve is the location of a chenier plain, a large bed of fossilised shells.

[8] Eastern Beach is part of the rohe of Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, who descend from the crew of the Tainui migratory waka, who visited the area around the year 1300.

[10] From the 1790s, Te Rangitāwhia was the paramount chief of Ngāi Tai, whose principal residences were at Waiārohia and to the south at Ōhuiarangi / Pigeon Mountain.

[10] During the Musket Wars in the 1820s, Te Waiārohia and the Eastern Beach area were evacuated, and the lands became tapu to Ngāi Tai due to the events of the conflict.

[12][13] Most members of Ngāi Tai fled to the Waikato for temporary refuge during this time, and when English missionary William Thomas Fairburn visited the area in 1833, it was mostly unoccupied.

[17][14] In 1847, Howick was established as a defensive outpost for Auckland, by fencibles (retired British Army soldiers) and their families.

[18] In 1851, William Mason bought a 320 acre plot from Fairburn at the modern-day site of Bucklands Beach, where he established a farm, growing oats, wheat and tending goats.

[19][20] From 1880 until 1922, John Granger operated a lime factory at Eastern Beach, where local shells were crushed and burned.

[22] During this time, phoenix palms were planted at Eastern Beach, to give the area a tropical appearance.

[24] In 1923, Eastern Beach was subdivided and established as a housing estate,[25] and in 1934 became a regularly used site for the Auckland Caravaning Club.

[26] During World War II, concrete pillboxes were built at each end of Eastern Beach on the clifftops by local residents.