Tela was founded by the Spanish conquistador Cristóbal de Olid on 3 May 1524; 500 years ago (1524-05-03), near an indigenous town, Tehuacán, ruled by a cacique named Cucumba, which had a very good source of clean water, food and medicinal plants.

Olid named his town Triunfo de la Cruz (Triumph of the Cross), as it was founded on this Catholic holy day.

There are historians who say that the origin of the name is a contraction of Tetela, which in the Nahuat language means "land of hills and craggy mountains."

At the end of the 16th century, Tela Bay was frequented by buccaneers who roamed the Caribbean Sea, looking for ways to attack the Spanish schooners that hauled fortunes in precious metals and stones, from Trujillo, Puerto Cortés, Havana, and other Atlantic ports.

In 1797, the English exiled the Garifuna, a group of Afro-Carib origin from St Vincent to the island of Roatan.

Many of these workers were African-descended people from the English-speaking Caribbean, especially Jamaica and Belize, and introduced the English language and Protestant (especially Methodist and Anglican) churches to the town.

In time the government of Honduras took up an anti-West Indian line, which was accompanied in many cases, by racist literature and cartoons that contrasted the African descended Caribbean workers with the mestizo Hondurans.

[5] In 1930 floods ruined the banana industry, broke bridges and closed railroads, causing whole plantations to cease operations.

In the aftermath of the strike, which led to major concessions to workers, the English speaking community was subject to retaliation and many left the region, often immigrating to the United States or Canada, or to the Caribbean countries from which they or their ancestors had originated.

[citation needed] Tela is one of various towns on the Caribbean Coast of Central America with many Garifuna communities nearby.

Many of the outlying areas have paved main thoroughfares; smaller side streets are generally dirt roads in the town outsides.

In addition to the downtown grocery store and the town market, in the barrios, nearly every street corner has its own "pulpería"—a small shop in the front of a family house, which sells milk, eggs, juice, beans and other everyday needs to the neighbourhood.