[5] The area was first explored by a white man of European descent in 1853, Captain John W. Gunnison of the United States Army.

Following the closure of the reservation, the site was settled in 1880 by Samuel Wade and William Clark, who had accompanied Enos Hotchkiss to the area.

It lies near the head of the North Fork Valley, an area about 150 miles (240 km) by air southwest of Denver.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town of Paonia has a total area of 0.85 square miles (2.2 km2), all of it land.

The community has mounted legal challenges to proposed oil and gas drilling fracking in the surrounding North Fork Valley.

KVNF also now serves a number of towns in the North Fork and Uncompaghre valleys in western Colorado through a network of stations and translators.

The weekly Mountain Valley News was published in Cedaredge and distributed widely throughout Delta County, but closed in September 2013.

Paonia has a humid continental climate (Dfb) with hot summers and moderately cold winters.

There are over 20 musical acts, poetry, an art show, a chili cook off, a street dance, crafts, wine tasting, as well as classes on canning, raising livestock, and sustainable living.

Many "New Agers" and members of the psychedelic community continue to reside in and around Paonia, which was the boyhood home of one of the voices and key figures of "ecstatic state" knowledge, Terence McKenna.

The Paonia Film Festival celebrates the beauty of the Western Colorado landscape and the rich stories of the people who live there.