Definitions of the region vary widely, but generally encompass counties surrounding the Binghamton and Elmira-Corning metropolitan areas.

A longtime home of the Iroquois Confederacy, European settlers moved to the region after the American Revolutionary War.

Other definitions define it as comprising the combined Corning-Elmira-Binghamton Metropolitan Statistical Areas, which includes Steuben, Chemung, Tioga and Broome Counties but not Chautauqua, Cattaraugus or Allegany, which are considered Western New York.

The New York State Division of Local Government Services presently classifies the following fourteen counties as members of the Southern Tier: Allegany, Broome, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Chemung, Chenango, Cortland, Delaware, Otsego, Schoharie, Schuyler, Steuben, Tioga, and Tompkins.

The colonies that eventually became the states of New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania all laid claim to the Southern Tier at various points in the 17th and 18th centuries, while not making any significant attempt to settle the territory.

The region was quickly settled by whites after the Revolutionary War, when settlers were again allowed west of the Appalachian divide.

The Southern Tier shared in the economic growth of the early 19th century, but its hilly terrain made it less suitable to canal-building, and later, railroading, than the more-level corridor to the north between Albany and Buffalo.

Beset by financial and technical difficulties, the latter two canals nonetheless were important catalysts for economic growth, and indeed for the construction of the railroads that would supplant them.

The railroad and available fuel from the region's dense forests attracted Corning Glass Works to Steuben County in 1868.

The region became home to prosperous farms and small factory towns (with the exception of larger Binghamton) during the first half of the 20th century.

But declines in U.S. manufacturing hit the region hard and it suffered even more than other parts of upstate New York and northern Pennsylvania.

Bus service is provided along the entire I-86/NY 17 corridor by Coach USA's Shortline/Erie services from Jamestown to New York City and Buffalo, and Trailways connects the Southern Tier with Buffalo, Dubois (at the western end in Salamanca), Sunbury/Lock Haven (at Elmira), and Syracuse, Albany and Harrisburg (at Binghamton).

Until the demise of long-distance passenger rail service in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, the Erie Railroad operated passenger trains in the region, with Chicago, Illinois as the western terminus and Jersey City, New Jersey as the eastern terminus, with ferry connections to New York City.

As of 2011, the highest priority for high-speed rail projects in New York is in the Empire Corridor, of which no part crosses the Southern Tier.

In addition, other factories in the region make military aircraft, televisions, furniture, metal forgings and machine tools.

[7][8] There is significant debate about allowing hydraulic fracturing of the Marcellus Shale in the Southern Tier, which is currently banned in New York.

The JEP also remains one of the company's largest manufacturing facilities, as it accounts for 12 percent of Cummins' total engine production in 2012.

The western and northern edges of the Southern Tier are known as ski country, and the hilly terrain (that forms a continental divide known as the Chautauqua Ridge) is notorious for frequent and heavy lake effect snow.

At its peak in the 1960s, over a dozen ski resorts resided in the Southern Tier, many in Cattaraugus County, before most of them closed due to various assorted causes by the 1980s.

Two stations (more-or-less independent WVTT-CD and Retro Television Network owned-and-operated translator WBUO-LD) are licensed to Olean but serve Buffalo in practice.

Only one major league franchise has ever resided in the Southern Tier: the professional basketball team Elmira Colonels, which played from 1952 to 1953.