In 1817 a party led by the Surveyor General, John Oxley, camped near the town. Oxley named the site ‘Camp Hill’. He was unimpressed with the clay soil, poor timber and swamps. He described the land as ‘it is impossible to imagine a worse country‘.

A run named ‘Bogabigal’ was occupied in the district around 1834, but settlement was slow. This all changed when gold was discovered by Harry Stephens in 1861 at what is now named King George V Park. By 1862 there were 30,000 people on the Lachlan goldfields. The tent city was initially known as ‘Black Ridge’, after the ironbarks in the area, but by 1861 it had been renamed ‘Forbes’.

The town’s first hotel was the Albion which was reputed to have sold the greatest quantity of alcohol in Australia through the 1860s. Between 1861-1863 an estimated 8,100 kg of gold was mined in the district. However, by 1863 the gold rush was over. The population had declined to 3,500 as miners moved away due to the small returns from alluvial claims and seepage into mine shafts from the Lachlan River.

Between 1862-1865 bushrangers, including Frank Gardiner, Ben Hall and Johnnie Gilbert, ranged through the area harassing the gold escorts and wealthy miners. On 5 May, 1865 Ben Hall was shot and killed near Forbes.

By the mid-1860s French settlers J.B. Reymond and Auguste Nicolas had developed a weir and irrigation system, established the town’s first sawmill (1861) and the first vineyard and winery. Forbes was declared a municipality in 1870.  It is claimed that the first sheepdog trial in Australia, and possibly the world, was held in Forbes in 1872.

The railway reached the town in 1893. Wyangala Dam was completed in 1935, providing the birth of vast irrigation farming in the area.