The first mention of a place called Mielec occurs in the thirteenth century in the 1229 bull of Pope Gregory IX.

In 1775, Anna Ossilińska married Jan Pieniążek, bringing as a dowry her share of part of the city.

Suchorzewski sold Mielec's property to Ludwik Starzeński in 1847, who then disposed of it ten years later to a Jewish family named Gross.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the market place in Mielec was surrounded by brick houses, and in 1902, a courthouse was built.

In 1912, a gymnasium (or academic high school) and the office of County Council were established and buildings constructed to house them.

[5] Mielec's economy has been based for the last 70 years around a single industrial enterprise, which transformed the city and increased its population sixfold.

In 1936, a state-owned factory making airplane chassis was established (State Aviation Works - Airframe Fakcory No.

This new manufacturing industry necessitated the development of residential housing for factory workers and management personnel.

After the outbreak of World War II, the city and the airplane company fell into the hands of the German invaders.

In 1942, the Jewish population of Mielec was deported to death camps, except for a few who remained as slave labour at the factory.

During the deportation, the factory hangars were the site of a mass murder of several hundred of Mielec's Jews, who were buried there.

The Gestapo used Jewish informants, the so-called V-leute in region to penetrate underground resistance and denounce hiding Jews;special barracks were set up in labour camp near Mielec for Jewish informers and their families, who were granted special privileges.

[6][7] After the war, a monument was placed at the factory with a vague inscription typical of holocaust memorials during the Communist era: "To those employees of the Factory and the inhabitants from the area of both Polish and Jewish nationality murdered during World War II: A tribute from Mielec's Youth."

Another mass grave of Jews with a monument may be found in one corner of the Mielec Catholic cemetery, where the victims of a 1941 Nazi atrocity were buried.

After 1989 and the economic changes due to the fall of communism, factory orders declined and the plant encountered serious financial difficulties.

The situation changed in 1995, due to the establishment of Poland's first Special Economic Zone EURO-PARK Mielec.