The River Wear flows through Weardale before reaching Bishop Auckland and then Durham, meeting the sea at Sunderland.

The Wear Valley local government district covered the upper part of the dale, including Weardale, between 1974 and 2009, when it was abolished on County Durham's becoming a unitary authority.

The dale's principal settlements include St John's Chapel and the towns of Crook, Stanhope and Wolsingham.

Weardale's winters are typically harsh and prolonged with regular snow, nowadays taken advantage of by skiers using a ski run at Swinhope Head.

Past occupation or activity by man is attested by evidence such as the Heatheryburn Bronze Age collection of gold and other objects, now in the British Museum; altars placed by Roman officers who took hunting trips out from forts in present-day County Durham; and the use from Norman times of Frosterley Marble, a black fossiliferous layer of limestone occurring near that village, as an ornamental material in Durham Cathedral and many other churches and public buildings.

As a youth between the world wars the poet W. H. Auden walked amid the wild countryside and the relics of the lead-mining industry in and around Weardale and found them a lifelong source of inspiration.

Among modern works 'The Last Ballad', by Helen Cannam, is a lively historical novel set in the dale in the early 19th century.

Large amounts of ironstone were taken, especially from the Rookhope area, during the Industrial Revolution to supply ironworks at Consett and other sites in County Durham.

Mines such as Frazers Hush, Boltsburn, Heights, Cambokeels, Blackdene, West Pastures, Greenlaws, Billings Hill and Groverake are legendary for their fine fluorite specimens.

Mineralised veins in a nearby limestone quarry were then opened up to create the Diana Maria Mine, which produces fine green fluorite specimens and the occasional purple.

It was installed in the 1870s to power the crushing of grit in tanks in an adjacent building so as to complete the separation of lead ore from worthless stone.

In the lower dale round Stanhope and Frosterley, however, carboniferous limestone was quarried on a large scale from the 1840s, when rail links with Teesside and Consett enabled it to be carried to these and other places for use in the iron- and steel-making processes there.

Weardale had a railway as far as Wearhead in three stages opened in 1847, 1862 and 1895, but the section of the line above Eastgate closed between 1961 and 1968 in another series of three closures owing to the decline of the lead industry.

The connection to Network Rail has seen a number of through excursions during 2010, although for daily passenger traffic a separate platform called Bishop Auckland West is used.