The community was first populated during the California Gold Rush, because multiple would-be Forty-niners stopped after crossing the Carson River.

[10] Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental thoroughfare, passes through Fallon from east to west, following the original Pony Express trail.

While the city has expanded greatly over the years, the "old town" area is several blocks of Maine Street.

Many of the buildings here date back to the early 20th century, including the historic Fallon Theater, which is still in operation as of 2023.

On June 16, 2019, downtown (Maine Street) Fallon was listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

[15] In response, the U.S. Senate held the Field Hearing Before the Committee on Environment and Public Works during the winter of 2001.

According to the minutes of that hearing, on February 14, Berman pressed for answers to ascertain why certain individuals, but not others were selected for the panel of experts chosen to investigate the leukemia clusters and "why the Federal Government was not involved in the testing."

And on April 12, Berman obtained this testimony from one of the medical experts in attendance:[16] [Dr. Thomas Sinks, the associate director for science at the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control] clarified that nobody ever developed cancer because of chances.

The probability of the Fallon cluster being a chance event was described by Dr. Sinks as being unlikely.In 2011, epidemiologists at the University of California, Berkeley theorized that the "space-time patterning" of the leukemia cluster was "consistent with the involvement of an infectious disease," and that a "possible mode of transmission" was "by means of a vector" since mosquitoes were "abundant in Churchill County outside of the urban area of Fallon.

Due to Fallon's elevation and aridity, the diurnal temperature variation is quite substantial, especially in the summer months.

Fallon's climate is quite dry, due to its location in the Rain Shadow of the Sierra Nevada.

Los Alamos National Laboratory, in conjunction with the Department of Defense, conducted an underground nuclear test 28 miles (45 km) southeast of Fallon at 5 p.m. on October 26, 1963.