Most residents live in Goldfield or in the town of Dyer in Fish Lake Valley, near the California border.

[4] When it was organized, it comprised the part of the Nevada Territory south of the 39th parallel and east of Mason Valley.

An early California miner from San Jose, James Manning Cory, named the Esmeralda Mining District after Esmeralda the Romani dancer from The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

[6] Just after the organization of Esmeralda County, the vast majority of the land area had yet to be explored.

The event resulted in the establishment of three mining districts in the Toiyabe Range, namely Marysville, Twin River, and Washington, and the establishment of a number of settlements and ranches in Esmeralda County.

[5] Esmeralda has had three county seats: Aurora until 1883, Hawthorne from 1883 to 1907 and finally Goldfield.

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) wrote about his time as a miner in the Esmeralda District in his book Roughing It.

Esmeralda grew from a gold mining boom in the first years of the 20th century.

Goldfield, a town founded in 1902, increased rapidly, and it soon became the largest town in Nevada, with about 20,000 people in 1906,[7] but its population rapidly decreased after the Goldfield, Nevada, labor troubles of 1906–1907.

The mines were largely tapped out by the end of the 1910s and the economy and population declined afterwards.

A very small part of Death Valley National Park lies in its southeast corner.

The county is dominated by the Silver Peak and Monte Cristo mountain ranges.

[15] In terms of ancestry, 26.7% were German, 18.6% were English, 14.0% were American, 13.8% were Irish, and 8.7% were Swedish.