[13][14][15] The hamlet of Westover was built in an area that was originally a Seneca Iroquois tribal village, Tinawatawa, which was first visited by the French in September 1699.

[19] During the War of 1812, British regulars and local militia defeated invading American troops at the Battle of Stoney Creek, fought in what is now a park in eastern Hamilton.

As he had been instructed, Durand circulated the offers at York during a session of the Legislative Assembly, which established a new Gore District, of which the Hamilton townsite was a member.

An early indication of Hamilton's sudden prosperity occurred in 1816 when it was chosen over Ancaster, Ontario to be the new Gore District's administrative centre.

[30] In June and July 1916, the a strike of up to 2,000 machinists was caused by a failure of employers to improve working conditions or pay during a booming World War I economy.

[32] Infrastructure and retail development continued, with the Burlington Bay James N. Allan Skyway opening in 1958,[33] and the first Tim Hortons store in 1964.

[35] Approximately 300 firefighters battled the blaze, and many sustained severe chemical burns and inhaled volatile organic compounds when at least 400 tonnes of PVC plastic were consumed in the fire.

[41] This closure capped a significant shift in the city's economy: the percentage of the population employed in manufacturing declined from 22 to 12 percent between 2003 and 2013.

This sandbar was deposited during a period of higher lake levels during the last ice age and extends southeast through the central lower city to the escarpment.

[28] John Ryckman, born in Barton township (where present day downtown Hamilton is), described the area in 1803 as he remembered it: "The city in 1803 was all forest.

[47] George Hamilton, a settler and local politician, established a town site in the northern portion of Barton Township in 1815.

It took at least a decade to sell all the original lots, but the construction of the Burlington Canal in 1823, and a new court-house in 1827 encouraged Hamilton to add more blocks around 1828–9.

At this time he included a market square in an effort to draw commercial activity onto his lands, but the town's natural growth occurred to the north of Hamilton's plot.

High e. coli counts are regularly observed through testing by McMaster University near many of Hamilton's waterfalls, sometimes exceeding the provincial limits for recreational water use by as much as 400 times.

Notably, in March 2020, it was revealed that as much as 24 billion litres of untreated wastewater has been leaking into the Chedoke creek and Cootes' Paradise areas since at least 2014 due to insufficiencies in the city's sewerage and storm water management systems.

[57] In 2023, it was found that the city has areas of poor air quality with a high concentration of benzo(a)pyrene, particularly in neighbourhoods near industrial sites.

Ordered by the U.S. Department of Justice to divest itself of the Canadian company, ArcelorMittal has been allowed to retain Dofasco provided it sells several of its American assets.

[74] The top countries of birth for the newcomers living in Hamilton in the 1990s were: former Yugoslavia, Poland, India, China, the Philippines, and Iraq.

[102][103] Street gangs such as the Original/Oriental Blood Brothers & the Oriole Crescent Crips,[104][105] and biker crews such as Satan's Choice MC and the Hells Angels also have presence in Hamilton.

[106][107] Hamilton's local attractions include the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, the HMCS Haida National Historic Site,[108] Dundurn Castle (the residence of an Allan MacNab, the 8th Premier of Canada West),[109] the Royal Botanical Gardens, the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, the African Lion Safari Park, the Cathedral of Christ the King, the Workers' Arts and Heritage Centre, and the Hamilton Museum of Steam & Technology.

[115] Supercrawl is a large community arts and music festival that takes place in September in the James Street North area of the city.

A 2006 article in The Globe and Mail, entitled "Go West, Young Artist", focused on Hamilton's growing art scene.

The CCMA works with marginalized populations and combines new media services with arts education and skills development programming.

[125] On November 7, 2009, in Guadalajara, Mexico, it was announced Toronto would host the 2015 Pan Am Games after beating out two rival South American cities, Lima, Peru, and Bogotá, Colombia.

[129][130] The 108th championship game of the Canadian Football League, the Grey Cup, was played in Hamilton in 2021 and won by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Hillfield Strathallan College is on the West Hamilton mountain and is a CAIS member, non-profit school for children from early Montessori ages through grade twelve and has around 1,300 students.

[147] The Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts is home to many of the area's young actors, dancers, musicians, singers and visual artists.

Today, managed by TradePort International Corporation, passenger traffic at the Hamilton terminal has grown from 90,000 in 1996 to approximately 900,000 in 2002 with mostly domestic and vacation destinations in the United States, Mexico and Central America.

[152] In 2003, the city began developing a 30-year growth management strategy which called, in part, for a massive aerotropolis industrial park centred on Hamilton Airport.

[154] A report by Hemson Consulting identified an opportunity to develop 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of greenfields (the size of the Royal Botanical Gardens) that could create an estimated 90,000 jobs by 2031.