[citation needed] The old Sich, or fortified camp of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, brilliantly described in N. V. Gogol's novel Taras Bulba (1834) was situated a little higher up the river.

One of the graves, close to the town, contained, along with other Scythian antiquities, a well-known precious vase representing the capture of wild horses.

According to archaeological excavations, the city's area was populated as early as the Neolithic epoch in the 4th millennium BCE[4] as evidenced by remnants of a settlement discovered on banks of Mala Kamianka River [uk].

[4][5] In burial mounds from the copper-bronze epoch of the 3rd-1st millenniums BCE were found stone and bronze tools, clay sharp-bottomed ornamental dishes.

[4] At the beginning of the 16th century, in the location of modern Nikopol, appeared a river crossing over the Dnieper controlled by Cossacks, called Mykytyn Rih.

[4] Under the same name, the crossing is mentioned in the diary of the Holy Roman Empire envoy Erich Lassota von Steblau, who visited the Zaporizhian Sich in 1594.

[6][7] In 1652, due to conflict with the Hetman of Zaporizhian Host, Kosh Otaman Fedir Liutay moved the administrative seat to Chortomlyk.

Albert Speer referred to it as the "center of manganese mining", and, therefore, of vital importance to the German war effort.

[9] The Soviet policy of industrialization created the Kakhovka Reservoir which existed from 1956 to 2023, submerging what could be now the most sacred place of an early distinctly Ukrainian statehood: the lands of the former Zaporizhian Host, with their burial sites.