Coroglen was formerly known as Gumtown, as it was a centre of kauri-gum digging. By the early 1920s the gum diggers were gone. Coroglen was the name of a horse which raced throughout New Zealand from 1920 to 1923 and was adopted as the township’s name in 1922, possibly also because of the similarity to the name Coromandel.

In 2010, when this photo was taken, patrons of the Coroglen Tavern were greeted with a message of opposition to mining, a sentiment held by many residents of the Coromandel Peninsula.