Noorduyn's ideal bush plane was a high-wing monoplane airframe to facilitate loading and unloading passengers and cargo at seaplane docks, where the high wing provided the best clearance from docks and seaplane ramp fencing, and least opportunity for damage, and from conventional airports, with a structure that could be easily repaired in the bush.

The final design looked much like Noorduyn's earlier Bellanca Skyrocket, a strut-braced high-wing monoplane with a welded steel tubing fuselage.

The divided landing gear were fitted to fuselage stubs with the legs secured with two bolts each to allow the alternate arrangement of floats or skis.

The first Norseman, powered by a Wright R-975-E3 Whirlwind, was flight tested on floats on November 14, 1935, and was sold and delivered to Dominion Skyways Ltd. on January 18, 1936, registered as "CF-AYO" and named “Arcturus."

CF-BAU, serial number 6, had minor changes that were required for it to be certified, and had a customer supplied 450 hp (340 kW) Pratt & Whitney R-1340 Wasp SC-1 engine as the Norseman Mk.II, but was later re-engined with a 600 hp (450 kW) Pratt & Whitney Wasp S3H-1, its original intended engine, on June 26, 1937 as the prototype for the Norseman Mk.IV.

Noorduyn was still the sole manufacturer, but when the USAAF considered ordering a larger number of C-64As, license production of 600 by Aeronca Aircraft Corp. (Middletown, Ohio) was planned before being cancelled in 1943.

Major Glenn Miller was a passenger on a UC-64A Norseman (s/n 44-70285) flown by F/O John R. S. Morgan which disappeared over the English Channel on December 15, 1944, possibly due to being struck by bombs jettisoned from RAF Lancasters after an aborted raid.

[1] Another Norseman crashed into King Alfred's Tower, a 50 m (160 ft) tall Stourhead estate folly in Somerset, England, killing all five air crew in 1944.

With large Korean War commitments at that time, the company put it into temporary storage where it was destroyed in a hangar fire in September 1951.

The company continued to provide support for operating Norseman aircraft and built three new Mk.Vs before selling its assets in 1982 to Norco Associates.

Each summer in July, the "Norseman Floatplane Festival" brings Norseman aircraft to Red Lake as the centrepiece of a community based weekend festival ranging from stage entertainment, children's games and rides, contests, cultural and historical displays and street vendors with craft and specialty booths.

Canadian Second World War ace George Beurling died in May 1948 landing a Norseman at Urbe Airport in Italy while ferrying it to the newly formed Israeli Air Force.

The engine of a Norseman that crashed during Operation Maccabi of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War are on the IAF's Har Hatayasim (Pilots' Mountain) memorial near Jerusalem.