Chiltern was once on the main road between Melbourne and Sydney but is now bypassed by the Hume Freeway running one kilometre to the south.

The nearby Yeddonba Aboriginal Cultural Site, in the Chiltern-Mt Pilot National Park, includes artworks created by the original inhabitants of the Chiltern area, including one ochre painting thought to represent a Thylacine, an animal now extinct and which has been extinct on mainland Australia for thousands of years.

The discovery of gold by John Conness in late 1858 and early 1859, brought a huge shift in population into the Chiltern – Black Dog Creek area.

[6] Gold discoveries drew many miners away from the nearby Ovens goldfields; namely Beechworth, Nine Mile Creek and Stanley during the big drought of 1859.

Unlike those surface-based sluicing mining operations around Beechworth, the gold around Chiltern was extracted by sinking deep wet leads.

These operations required a different type of miner and working groups, capable of sinking shafts to some 400 feet in depth.

Several movies have been shot using Chiltern's well-preserved Victorian-era streetscapes, including Walt Disney's Ride a Wild Pony.