Prior to the European colonization of the Americas, there was an aboriginal American encampment or village on the site, of the Unami speaking Lenni-Lenape tribe.

The earliest recorded resident of European descent on the site appears to have been Patrick Gordon, who settled in Providence Township, along the Schuylkill in what is now Mont Clare.

This Gordon lived in an improved cave in the hill below where the Mont Clare railroad station would be located over 100 years later.

Bean's History of Montgomery County Pennsylvania suggests Quincyville was the location of Joseph Richardson's 1766 licensed inn.

[5] Gordon's Cave became the site of a very minor American victory when a British squad tarried there to liberate a roasting goose and were captured by militia.

In the mid-20th century, the lower mile was filled in when the river was dredged, however the upper portion was kept watered at the insistence of Mont Clare and Port Providence residents who use it for recreation.

In the winter of 1843-1844, Joseph Whitaker, ironmaster and state legislator from Phoenixville, obtained a charter for the first Mont Clare Bridge.

[9] In 1846, Whitaker sold his interest in the Phoenix Iron Works and moved across the river to Quincyville to land he had purchased there.

[14] In late 1906, an express train derailed in Mont Clare, narrowly avoiding plunging into the river and any loss of life.

At the end, the Post Office was located at the eastern corner of Bridge and Walnut Streets in a small storefront in an apartment building.

[21] The Black Rock Company continued operations from the Mont Clare and Oaks fire houses for many years.

In 1871[22] and 1872[23] atlases, the village is still labeled Quincyville, but Samuel W. Pennypacker refers to only Mont Clare in his 1872 Annals of Phoenixville and Its Vicinity.

[28] There is a story that the railroad dubbing the local station Montclair after Whitaker's estate was the source of the name change.

The county map in Bean's 1884 history shows Mont Clare on the river and Quincyville as an adjacent village, inland.

But Phoebe H. Gilkyson, a Whitaker great-granddaughter and later resident of the estate, refers to the house as Montclair in her papers.

Mont Clare is located inside a bend of the Schuylkill River, which forms the western and southern sides of the village.

In 1995, Montgomery County designated the Mont Clare Cliffs and Ravines as a natural area "priority site".

[38] Extending upriver from Mont Clare along the Schuylkill, this series of "steep cliffs and deeply etched ravines" are formed by the intersection of hard Lockatong Formation argillites with the river.

The park is at the center of the "Schuylkill Navigation Canal, Oakes Reach Section" Historic District.

Until 2020, Mont Clare was the western end of the contiguous Schuylkill River Trail (SRT) out of Philadelphia.

[43] In 1855, future Mennonite Church leader and publisher, John F. Funk, had his first job teaching in a one-room school house in Quincyville.

[44] The eventual 23rd Governor of Pennsylvania, Samuel W. Pennypacker, spent his boyhood at the Mont Clare estate of his maternal grandfather, Joseph Whitaker.

Sundance's parents, Josiah and Annie (Place) Longabaugh, and his sisters Samanna and Emma, are buried in the nearby Morris Cemetery in Phoenixville.

Between 1882 and 1899, poet and local historian Christian Carmack Sanderson grew up living in Mont Clare and adjacent Port Providence.

In 1916, the Mont Clare estate was occupied by Phoebe Hunter Gilkyson, a great granddaughter of Joseph Whitaker.

Mrs. Gilkyson was a noted literary and social figure, whose poems and stories were published in Harper's, Scribner's and McClure's Magazines.

Terry co-authored the chart topping Memories Are Made of This and wrote the Oscar nominated "The Bare Necessities" from the 1967 movie The Jungle Book.