Glencoe is a rural/residential locality four km north-west of Gowrie Junction and 13 km north-west of Toowoomba.

Before farm selections began in the late 1870s Glencoe was known as the Gowrie Scrub. The dense tree cover seems to have provoked an excess of clearing and ringbarking in later years. Several settlers were of Scots and German Lutheran origins, and the Scottish 'Glencoe' was suggested as the name of the primary school in 1881 instead of the unattractive 'Gowrie Scrub'. The Lutherans built a church in 1880 in the midst of the densely settled farm community. In fact, settlement was too dense, and there were nearly seventy families on less than 1400 ha of farm land in the area around the church. Most farmers went in for dairying. There was a dairy factory at Gowrie Junction, and another two opened in the 1920s north of Glencoe.

From being Gowrie Scrub, Glencoe became known as Prickly Pear Corner by the 1910s. The slow process of farm consolidations began, continuing until the 1940s. Consolidations sometimes lagged behind overgrazing and erosion of farm land.

Glencoe's proximity to Toowoomba has made it suitable for rural/residential living. Its census populations have been:

Census DatePopulation
1911235
1933103
2006617
2011385

F. Otto Theile, One hundred years of the Lutheran Church in Queensland, Queensland, United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia, 1938

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