In 1639, the Russians first reached the Pacific 105 kilometres (65 mi) southwest of Okhotsk at the mouth of the Ulya River.

Although the Russian pioneers were skilled builders of river boats, they lacked the knowledge and equipment to build seagoing vessels, which meant that Okhotsk remained a coastal settlement and not a port.

For the next 145 years, Okhotsk was the main Russian seaport on the Pacific, supplying Kamchatka and other coastal settlements.

In 1736, Okhotsk was moved 3 km (2 mi) downstream to a spit of land at the mouth of the Okhota River, converting the ostrog into a proper port.

Vitus Bering's two Pacific expeditions (1725–1729 and 1733–1742) brought in large numbers of people, including the first scholars and expert sailors, and led to a great deal of building.

Anton de Vieira was the town's governor at that time; he was of Portuguese origin, son of a Jewish father and Christian mother.

Bering's men found valuable sea otters east of Kamchatka, and fur hunters began island-hopping along the Aleutian Islands.

In 1822 the Scottish traveler Captain John Cochrane ranked Okhotsk just after Barnaul as the neatest, cleanest, and most pleasant town he had seen in Siberia.

In addition to the difficult track inland, the harbor was poor, and the short growing season and lack of plowland meant that food had to be imported.

Ice-choked water during the spring breakup frequently flooded the town (twenty times from 1723 to 1813), as did high surf on a number of occasions.

[7] Okhotsk was of some military importance during the Russian Civil War, when the White army generals Vasily Rakitin and Anatoly Pepelyayev used it as their place of arms in the Far East.