Cooktown, town in Queensland, Australia. Cooktown is in the far north of the state on the Coral Sea near the Great Barrier Reef. It is a tourist resort that also serves the surrounding agricultural area, and has a small airstrip and port. It is named in memory of Captain James Cook, who beached his ship Endeavour there in 1770 after it had been damaged on the Great Barrier Reef. His colleague the naturalist Joseph Banks collected many samples and wrote the first European description of a kangaroo after seeing them here. A re-enactment of Cook's landing is held each June and the James Cook Museum commemorates the event. Cooktown was the location of the Palmer River gold rush in 1873, when 30,000 hopeful miners, many of them Chinese, flocked to the town and neighbouring Port Douglas. However, the town rapidly declined after the boom. Population (1991) 1,342.Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001
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