In the 1880s Don McGillivray moved to British Columbia and worked for a principal contractor, Andrew Onderonk, on the construction of the main line of the CPR between Port Moody and Eagle Pass.

Some houses today are remnants of a one-time railway-based resort and cabins which sprang up after the opening of the rail line in the early 1910s, which took the name of the waterfall a few hundred yards up McGillivray Creek from its mouth on the lake.

During World War II, McGillivray Falls, as the community was then known, was one of four "self-supporting centres" in the Lillooet Country for the forced evacuation of Japanese Canadians outside a 100-mile "quarantine zone" from the Coast.

McGillivray Falls was just outside the 100-mile limit, but due to the area's isolation (there was no road to the Coast before the 1960s) internees at McGillivray were hired by Andy Devine to work at his sawmill 2 miles downline from D'Arcy, at the head of Anderson Lake and itself within the 100-mile limit; the location of that mill is today the unincorporated rural settlement of Devine.

McGillivray is in Electoral Area C of the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District, which handles matters such as zoning and septic and construction permits.