Long before there were meatpacking plants, this was Gort Inse Guaire - "Gort" meaning a tilled field, the second part referring to King Guaire of Connacht, the 7th-century ruler whose royal residence stood here. Guaire Aidne mac Colmáin, who died in 663, was the king the medieval Irish remembered for legendary generosity. The annual culture-and-history magazine published in the town is still called Guaire Magazine in his honour, and has been running since the mid-1970s. Saint Colman mac Duagh - the founder of nearby Kilmacduagh monastery, with its 34-metre Irish round tower that leans more obviously than Pisa's - lived from 560 to 632 and was a contemporary of King Guaire. The 7th-century connections give Gort its deep history. The Georgian planning gives the town its present face.

Gort is a well-preserved Georgian-period planned market town. The central square holds the mid-19th-century Weigh House, where farmers' market produce was weighed for sale, and a 1933 marble sculpture of Christ the King by the Irish sculptor Albert Power - a moment of Catholic-Ireland public art set into the older landscape. The Catholic St. Colman's Church dates from 1825. The old Church of Ireland church is now the public library. The original bridge over the Gort River, constructed in 1771, still stands - and Bridge House nearby, dated around 1770, was the original residence of Lord Gort before the family moved to Lough Cutra Castle on the lake to the southeast. Bridge House was a Sisters of Mercy convent from 1857 until 2022, with a primary school on the grounds. As of 2022 it houses Ukrainian refugees - the town's history of welcoming displaced people continues.

Two and a half kilometres north of Gort sits Coole Park, the country house and estate of Lady Augusta Gregory from 1880 until her death in 1932. Lady Gregory turned Coole into the social centre of the Irish Literary Revival. W.B. Yeats stayed here repeatedly. So did George Bernard Shaw, Sean O'Casey, Augusta John, Edward Martyn, and others whose work shaped 20th-century Irish literature. Many of them carved their initials into the great copper beech tree on the lawn - the so-called Autograph Tree, which still stands. The house itself was demolished after 1941 by the Department of Lands; only the foundations and the gardens survive. Coole Park is now a state-run nature reserve with a visitor centre in the restored stable yard. Yeats's seven swans of "The Wild Swans at Coole" referred to the birds he counted on Coole Lake during his autumn visits.

Six kilometres northeast of Gort stands Thoor Ballylee, the 15th-century Hiberno-Norman tower house that W.B. Yeats bought in 1917 for £35 and rented for years afterward as his summer home. Yeats made it his "symbol" - a four-storey stone tower beside a stream, where he wrote some of his most powerful poems, including "The Tower" and "The Winding Stair." The Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society now runs the tower as a literary museum with a studio space, events, and tours. Lady Gregory had given Yeats the idea of buying it. Lady Gregory's nephew the writer John Millington Synge stayed at Coole. Jack Butler Yeats - the painter, W.B.'s younger brother - depicted scenes of everyday life in Gort. The town's literary credentials run as deep as its prehistory.

Gort had a hard recession. Beyond the meatpacking layoffs, the construction industry imploded between 2006 and 2011, and the town's population fell with it. Tourism is the sector locals see as the path forward. Fáilte Ireland and the Burren Lowlands destination marketing group steer visitors to Coole Park, Thoor Ballylee, the Kiltartan Gregory Museum (in an old schoolhouse), the Kilmacduagh round tower, and the nearby Burren. Three factories - Top Form (counter fabrication), Lisk (electronics), and Natus (medical devices) - employ workers in town. The Gort Co-operative Mart, founded in 1962, still moves about 16,500 cattle and 7,000 sheep through its gate annually for a €15.6 million turnover. In December 2022, An Bord Pleanála approved a biogas plant near the town despite local objections. The legal challenge was still being heard by the High Court as of August 2023.

Thomas Laughnan, born in Gort in 1824, received the Victoria Cross for actions during the Indian Rebellion - one of a handful of Galway men to win Britain's highest military honour. Paddy McMahon Glynn, also Gort-born (1855), emigrated to Australia and served variously as Attorney-General of Australia, Minister for External Affairs, and Minister for Home Affairs - a different colonial trajectory. The novelist Lisa McInerney, who won the Women's Prize for Fiction for The Glorious Heresies, was born here in 1981. And in 2022, Cliona D'Arcy of Gort became the first Irish woman to win heavyweight gold at the IBA Youth World Boxing Championships - a contemporary headline for a town whose history runs from medieval kings to Brazilian meatpackers and back out to international championship boxing.