In the south of Galt when preparing for building townhouses near Myers Road in 1989, archaeologists discovered the ruins of a longhouse village dated to between 1280 and 1360 CE.

[3] They may have practiced slash and burn agriculture (as was common in the Northeastern Woodlands since 1000 CE) cultivating the Three Sisters[4] and could have been occupied by the Iroquoian speaking Chonnonton Peoples.

[citation needed] One speculator, William Dickson, a wealthy immigrant from Scotland, bought 90,000 acres (360 km2) of land along the Grand River in 1816; this was later to become Galt and the Dumfries Townships.

[citation needed] Absalom Shade, a carpenter from Pennsylvania, was hired in 1816 by William Dickson to manage his lands in Dumfries Township.

[19] In 1889, the former Dickson Mill on the Grand River was converted to a hydro electric plant which operated until July 1911 when a power grid from Niagara Falls reached the community.

[20] In the early 1870s, the Credit Valley Railway planned to implement several lines running west and north from Toronto and in 1873, built freight and passenger buildings in Galt.

By 1879, the company had installed a bridge crossing the river and in December completed a preliminary test run with a train; it was successful.

Not long after Galt had become part of Cambridge, in May 1974, flooding on the Grand River filled city streets with water to a depth of about four feet.

[28][29] Cambridge is represented in Ottawa by Bryan May (Liberal), the federal member of Parliament who defeated the previous incumbent MP (Gary Goodyear, Conservative – 2004 to 2015) in the October 2015 election.

The route was launched in 2005 as a part of the Regional Growth Management Strategy, which called for greater densification of urban cores, and was considered an intermediary step while more long-term rapid transit plans were still maturing.

[31] In June 2009 Regional Council voted to approve a plan to construct a light rail line, which has been named the Ion rapid transit.

Mayor Doug Craig was a determined opponent of the plan, arguing that an expanded express bus system would be just as effective but much less expensive.

[33][34] By late February 2017, the Kitchener-Waterloo portion was well into the final phase of construction, but plans for the Cambridge section of the LRT were still in the very early stage.

Three routes had been agreed on in 2011, with eight "endorsed" stops: at Fairway, Sportsworld, Preston, Pinebush, Cambridge Centre Mall, Can-Amera, Delta and Ainslie Street Terminal.

Its southern section running through Cambridge was replaced with the 302 ION Bus route, terminating in the north at Fairway station, with riders able to continue on the light rail system as a linear transfer.

[37] As of June 2019, the Region of Waterloo planned for the 302 ION Bus to ultimately be replaced by an extension of the light rail line to Galt.

The University of Waterloo School of Architecture campus is located in Cambridge in the Riverside Silk Mill, also known as the Tiger Brand Building.