European history of the region dates back to 1627 when the Dutch vessel Gulden Zeepaert, skippered by François Thijssen, passed through waters off the Esperance coast and continued across the Great Australian Bight.

[3] French explorers are credited with making the first landfall near the present day town, naming it and other local landmarks while sheltering from a storm in this area in 1792.

[5] The Dempster brothers – Charles, Edward, Andrew and James – were granted 123,000 hectares (304,000 acres) of land in the area, first settling in 1864.

They initially brought sheep, cattle and horses overland from Northam, but in 1866 they shipped stock to the Esperance area from South Australia.

[6] Once other settlers started taking up land on the Esperance coastal plain, a small settlement developed, serving as an important link in the Overland Telegraph between Albany and Eucla.

[10] After visiting the town in 1898, Western Australian Premier John Forrest pledged to construct a railway line between Esperance and the Goldfields.

[14] Large-scale agriculture was introduced to the Esperance sand plain by an American syndicate, in partnership with the state government, in the 1960s following the discovery that adding superphosphate fertilisers containing trace elements to the poor soils made them suitable for cropping and pastoral activity.

[18] Skylab's demise was an international media event, with merchandising, wagering on time and place of re-entry, and nightly news reports.

Seventeen-year-old Stan Thornton scooped a few pieces of Skylab off the roof of his home in Esperance, caught the first flight to San Francisco, and collected the prize.

[20] In January 2007 Esperance experienced a storm with wind gusts of up to 110 km/h (68 mph) which brought 155 mm (6 in) of rainfall within 24 hours, causing significant flooding.

In 2007, the deaths of thousands of wild birds alerted residents to a toxicity hazard which was found to be the unsafe transport by truck and rail of lead ore from Wiluna for export by ship.

When elevated levels of lead were measured in a number of adults and children, as well as in water tanks, a multimillion-dollar cleanup was paid for by the state government.

A major nearby tourist attraction, 20 minutes away from the town centre, is the Cape Le Grand National Park, which offers a picturesque coast of largely granite terrain and sheltered white sand beaches.

In October 2020, a surfer who was a member of the local community in Esperance was killed by a shark at Wylie Bay near the town.

[43][44] Also in 2024, a local company was awarded the tender to design and build the replacement for the aged Graham MacKenzie Stadium,[43] which was built in 1985.

The Australian Community Media Group (ACM) suspended the weekly paper production due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As well as rural reports, ABC Esperance broadcasts national programs like AM, Conversations, The World Today, PM, Nightlife, Overnights, Grandstand, Saturday Night Country, and Australia All Over, along with a WA-centred weekend early morning and breakfast show, broadcast from either Perth, Albany or Kalgoorlie.