The mainstay of the town's formal economy has always been fishing, and the products of the sea coming in through Urk harbor continue to be exported widely, although today Urk's fishing boats must travel greater distances to gather them than was required in most historical periods.

Towards the north, the IJsselmeer is enclosed by an arc of boulder clay high areas of land which formed during an ice age glaciations of the Pleistocene epoch: Texel, Wieringen, Urk, de Voorst, and Gaasterland.

During the 13th century (and especially after a large storm in 1287) the Zuiderzee formed, and the water round Urk suddenly became a tidal sea.

The southwest side of Urk, which rose perpendicularly out of the sea, was called het Hoge Klif ("the High Cliff").

The oldest instance of the name "Urk" is a donation certificate of 966 from Holy Roman Emperor Otto I to the Sint Pantaleonsklooster monastery in Cologne.

Until 1475 the High and Low Lordship of Urk and Emmeloord (the most northern village of Schokland) was in the hands of the Van Kuinre family.

From 1660 to 1792 Urk and Emmeloord belonged to the municipality of Amsterdam, and ruled from 1660 to 1672 by Andries de Graeff.

Many Urkers who previously left the town because of overcrowding before the polder reclamation was completed were able to return to Urk.

The Noordoostpolder in its early years had an alternative name "Urker Land," from which Urk's newspaper, Het Urkerland, gets its name.

Additionally, Urk is focused on making a connection between the existing economy and new activities such as tourism, social care, maritime industry and services.

There is a memorial to lost fishermen on Urk, popularly known as the Urker vrouw: a statue of a woman looking out to sea, vainly awaiting the return of her husband and sons.

However, due to slowly growing support for the VVD, an Urk affiliate of the conservative/liberal party was founded in early 2011 and entered the 2014 local elections.

As part of the so-called Dutch "Bible belt", a vast majority of election votes go to the three Christian parties in the Netherlands, SGP, ChristenUnie and CDA.

The dialect developed this way because until World War II, Urk was an island and could be reached only by boat.

Because living conditions in Urk in historical times were very poor, young girls (typically about age 11 or 12) would frequently leave the island to become domestic servants, mostly in or around Amsterdam.

When Napoleon occupied the Netherlands, many French words were incorporated into both standard Dutch and Urkish.

Strangers are usually born from a cabbage, or a stork brings them to their new parents, but Urkers come from a large stone which lies about 30 metres (98 feet) from the shores of their former island.

Once the door was found, a small price had to be paid for the baby: traditionally one Dutch guilder for a girl but two for a boy.

Baantjer is mainly known for his large series of detective novels revolving around police inspector De Cock and his side-kick, sergeant Vledder.

The Dutch writer, painter and resistance hero Willem Arondeus spent some time on Urk from 1920.

While residing on Urk, during 1922, he wrote 'Afzijdige Strofen', a collection of twenty homo-erotic poems which were posthumously published in 2001.