Tellico Plains is home to several communities that include Coker Creek, Belltown, Rafter, Mount Vernon, Rural Vale, and more.

In the late 18th century, the Cherokee settled in this area, displaced from the east and north by European colonial encroachment.

[7] European Americans moved into the area and developed the land for agriculture, chiefly subsistence farming.

During the 1840s, Elisha Johnson, a former mayor of Rochester, New York, purchased a plantation here and built the Tellico River Mansion on his property.

With his brother Ebenezer, the former mayor of Buffalo, New York, he purchased the Tellico Iron and Manufacturing Company.

General William Sherman's Union Army soldiers destroyed the Tellico Iron Works.

Commercial gold mining continues on at least one private plot located slightly to the southwest of the tourist attraction.

[11] The town is also the eastern terminus of the Trans America Trail,[12] a popular OHV route to Oregon and the Pacific Ocean.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 1.6 square miles (4.1 km2), all land.