Before there was Evanton, there was Drummond - an old ferm toun on the same ground, settled who knows when, within the ancient parish of Kiltearn. Place-name evidence puts a Gaelic church here before the year 800. Three lordly residences stood within a few kilometres: Balconie Castle on the Cromarty Firth, Foulis Castle a little inland, and Novar. Balconie was an old seat of the Earls of Ross, with charters in 1281 recording the name Petkenny - a Pictish form that survived into the medieval period - and one in 1333 using Balkenny, suggesting a Gaelic replacement of the Pictish element. The Munros of Foulis dominated the area by the early modern period; they began burying their family at Kiltearn after 1588. Balconie Castle stood until 1965, when the owner could no longer afford to repair the dry rot, and it was demolished.

In 1806 Alexander Fraser paid £4,500 for an instalment on the Inchcoulter (or Balconie) estate, the money channelled through his wife's uncle Evan Baillie. Fraser's fortune came from plantation slavery in Trinidad and Grenada. He laid out the new village in regular streets and named them after his estates: Balconie after the property he had just bought, Camden after the Trinidad sugar estate he co-purchased in 1813, Livera after a Grenada plantation, and Hermitage after another Grenada plantation he managed for the Baillies. When emancipation came in 1834-1835, Fraser tried to claim compensation for the people he and his partners had enslaved at Camden and Livera; most of the money went instead to his wife's Baillie cousins. The records survive: 210 enslaved people at Camden in 1813, including a seven-year-old creole boy named Davy Campbell who worked in the grass gang; 94 at Levera in 1835; 149 at Hermitage in 1836. The village they paid for went on to a quieter history. They are part of Evanton's foundation whether or not the modern street signs acknowledge it.

The Allt Graad, sometimes called the River Glass, flows from Loch Glass near Ben Wyvis for nine kilometres before emptying into the Cromarty Firth. About three kilometres before it reaches the firth, it cuts through the Black Rock Gorge - a narrow slot a few hundred metres long and thirty-six metres deep, the kind of geological feature that makes you stop talking when you reach the footbridge over it. In April 2004, ten days of filming for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire took place at the gorge; this is where Harry is chased by a dragon during the Triwizard Tournament. The film crews left. The gorge remains. Walkers reach it through Evanton Community Woods, 138.82 acres owned and managed by the local community, where you can also find the defunct Balconie well and a small shelter known as The Cabin.

The RAF built an airfield near Evanton on Alness Bay in 1922. It was first known as the Novar Base, then as HMS Fieldfare. The largest aircraft ever to land there was a USAAF B-17 Flying Fortress; on Empire Day 1939 the base opened to the public and 9,000 visitors came through - the most northerly RAF station to participate in the day. The strangest chapter began in 1956. Evanton served as one of five launch bases for the GENETRIX programme, the United States Air Force operation to send stratospheric balloons carrying high-resolution cameras over the Soviet Union. Of 516 balloons launched from the five bases, 103 lifted off from Evanton; 60 of those were considered successful and 43 failed soon after launch or drifted off course. The airfield closed in the 1970s. The North Sea oil boom that followed brought a new wave of growth to the village, and the population has been rising steadily ever since.