The town was founded during the Central Otago goldrush in the 1860s, and was named after Alexandra of Denmark by John Aitken Connell who surveyed the town. In a two month period in 1862, two gold miners called Horatio Hartley and Christopher Reilly collected 34 kilograms of gold from the Cromwell Gorge, Hartley and Reilly travelled together to New Zealand after meeting in the Californian gold rush. They initially worked in secret to obtain as much gold as they could along the Cromwell gorge. In order to obtain the government's reward on offer for gold discoveries, they made the site public.