Coevorden received city rights in 1408. It is the oldest city in the province of Drenthe.
The city was captured from the Spanish in 1592 by a Dutch and English force under the command of Maurice, Prince of Orange. The following year it was besieged by a Spanish force but the city held out until its relief in May 1594. Coevorden was then rebuilt in the early seventeenth century to an ideal city design, similar to Palmanova. The streets were laid out in a radial pattern within polygonal fortifications and extensive outer earthworks.
The city of Coevorden indirectly gave its name to both Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and Vancouver, Washington, named after the 18th-century British explorer George Vancouver. The explorer's ancestors (and family name) originally came to England "from Coevorden" (van Coevern in Dutch Low Saxon).[5] There is also a family of nobility with the surname van Coeverden, sometimes spelled with a K (as with Canadian kayaker Adam van Koeverden).