[3] The first Europeans known to pass through Tambo Crossing was the party of Walter Mitchell in April 1839, following an existing Aboriginal travel route to the mountains.

It is thought that a massacre of 70 Gunaikurnai people recorded by Chief Protector of Aborigines George Augustus Robinson as occurring at a place called Shady Creek in the 1840s actually happened at Tambo Crossing.

In the early 1880s noted geologist and naturalist Alfred William Howitt mapped the area, with his paper, The Rocks of Noyang, being read to the Royal Society of Victoria in 1883.

[5] With the improved road and means of transportation, Tambo Crossing lost its importance as a stopping point along the highway, a problem exacerbated with the loss of the Sir Walter Scott Hotel in 1961.

The original crossing of the Tambo River, in historical times a ford, is now a low-level bridge on a minor dirt side road, about 500 metres (550 yd) to the southeast of the information board.

[5][7] The folk art sculpture Mr. Stringy is located about 8 km (5.0 mi) north of Tambo Crossing alongside the Great Alpine Road.

Tambo Crossing and the surrounding bushland was threatened and severely impacted by the Eastern Victoria Great Divide bushfires in January 2007.