[2] The town is in the southwestern part of the county and lies between Elmira and Binghamton.

For thousands of years, this area of New York had been settled by distinct cultures of indigenous peoples.

However, a 2011 paper by archaeologist Dr. John P. Hart argues there was no definable Owasco culture.

The historic Iroquoian-speaking tribes developed as the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee or the Iroquois Confederacy, since about the 15th century.

Loyalist and allied Iroquois tribes had been raiding colonial settlements in the Mohawk Valley and related areas.

After the American Revolutionary War, those Iroquois nations who had sided with the British were forced to cede their lands to New York, although their treaties were not ratified by the US Congress.

The First Methodist Episcopal Church of Tioga Center was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.