The first European, George Dickinson, an agent for the North West Trading Company, settled at Dtehshuh in 1879.

Haines became a supply center for the Dalton Trail from Chilkat Inlet offered a route to the Yukon for prospectors.

U.S. President McKinley proposed a ninety-nine year lease of a port near Haines, but Canada rejected that compromise.

However, the completion of the White Pass and Yukon Route railway in neighboring Skagway that same year led to the Dalton Trail's eventual abandonment and Haines' economic decline.

Fort William H. Seward, a United States Army installation, was constructed south of Haines and completed by 1904, on property donated by the mission from its holdings.

In 1943, the US Army built the Haines Highway to Haines Junction, Yukon The fort was deactivated in 1946 and sold as surplus property to a group of investors (Ted Gregg, Carl Heinmiller, Marty Cordes, Clarence Mattson, and Steve Homer) who called it "Port Chilkoot", thus forming the Port Chilkoot Company.

Haines was the southern terminal of the Haines-Fairbanks Pipeline (not connected or related to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System), which provided refined petroleum products to Fort Greely, Eielson Air Force Base, and Ladd Air Force Base (transferred to the Army as Fort Wainwright in 1961).

The construction and maintenance of the terminal and storage facility were a significant factor in the Haines economy for four decades.

[11] Haines has a dry-summer humid continental climate with warm summers (Köppen: Dsb), although featuring nearly double the precipitation of nearby Skagway.

[12] The CDP is situated on the Chilkat Peninsula at a narrow spot called the Deshu Isthmus.

Haines is the host of the Southeast Alaska State Fair, with four days of festivities on the last weekend of July.

Vendors, games, rides, and a music festival bring people from all over Alaska for this event.

Rafting in the Chilkat River and hiking in the Takshanuk Mountains (Mount Ripinsky and other peaks) are both popular.

In recent years, Haines has continued to receive quite a bit of attention as a heli-skiing site.

History of the town of Haines and the local Tlingit people are featured in the Sheldon Museum & Cultural Center.

The Tsirku Canning Company Museum offers a glimpse of Haines' historic salmon canneries.

The American Bald Eagle Foundation[24] offers visitors a chance to tour the Natural History Museum, full of items from Southeast Alaska, and meet 9 raptor ambassadors.

Haines is the location for the Southeast Alaskan State Fair, held annually each July.

The surviving set includes a dozen small structures common to a mining town of the period of Jack London's book of the same name.

The Haines Airport receives a large amount of traffic, with one air carrier (Alaska Seaplanes) providing services to Skagway and Juneau.

The difficulties in accessing health care for rural dwellers in general were examined in a short black-and-white documentary set and filmed in and around Haines in 1956, documenting and dramatizing a stop on the travels of a public health nurse and doctor (both female) aboard a travelling clinic boat, Hygiene.

At the conclusion of El Camino, which is the 2019 epilogue film to the series Breaking Bad, Jesse Pinkman obtains a new identity, escapes Albuquerque, New Mexico and moves to Haines.