Mary Ann was owned by whaling master John Thomas of Cheyne's Beach, 65 kilometres (40 mi) east of Albany, who had named it after his eldest daughter.

[5] The town became a shipping port for the mining industry, with a jetty built in 1901, the terminus of a railway line between Hopetoun and Ravensthorpe that operated from 1909 to 1935.

[9] The population in the 2016 census was 871, a 38% fall from 1,398 in 2011, due to the closure of the nearby Ravensthorpe Nickel Mine.

Hopetoun also has a hotel, motel, tavern, bakery, IGA supermarket, two cafes, post office/general store, hairdressers, beauty salon, community resource centre, chemist and two real estate agencies.

[10][11] Hopetoun possesses a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csb) with warm, relatively dry summers and mild, drizzly wet winters.