Smaller villages are: Altenhof, Altenwenden, Brün, Eichen, Elben, Gerlingen, Heid, Hillmicke, Möllmicke, Römershagen, Rothemühle, Schönau and Vahlberg.

Additionally, there are some hamlets: Bebbingen, Büchen, Döingen, Eichertshof, Girkhausen, Hoffnung, Huppen, Löffelberg, Rothenborn, Scheiderwald, Schwarzbruch, Trömbach, Wendenerhütte and Wilhelmstal.

Perhaps the area knew settlements even earlier as the names of local brooks and streams like Elbe, Albe, Wende, Bigge, Benze and Binse hint.

At the beginning of the 14th century a chapel Wendene capella is mentioned in a copy of a much older tax register of the Archdiocese of Cologne.

By the end of the Middle Ages people in the Siegerland fenced off their territory with a combination of trenches, earthworks and dense hedgerows.

After the Second World War many Germans driven out of the lost territories in the east moved into what was then the Amt of Wenden; they settled mostly in the centres of Vahlberg and Rothemühle.

In 2006, a resolution was handed down by the Evangelical parish of Olpe, to which Wenden belongs, to abandon the church in Rothemühle.

The Rothemühle chapel building club thereupon took over financial responsibility for the church, guaranteeing its continued existence for the time being.

The partnership was at first actively pursued, for instance through administrative employees’ exchanges, and continues today at a lower, but constant, level.

The Sauerland-Theater Hillmicke is a successful amateur theatre, and performs every November in the Wenden school centre's auditorium.

The Wendener Hütte is a technological cultural monument and one of the oldest still preserved charcoal furnace works in the German-speaking world.

The Spielmannszug Wenden (band) celebrates its centenary in 2008, holding a great festival weekend on 18–20 April.

On the Sundays after the Festivals of the Assumption (2 July) and the Nativity of Mary (8 September), a procession from Altenhof and Wenden to the Dörnschlade takes place, which is then finished with a church service there.

The economic development of the area depended mostly on iron ore and heavy spar deposits as well as an abundance of wood and water.

While most smelting works produced pig iron, the Wendener Hütte, a mill founded by Johannes Elmert in 1728, made crude steel.

Like others which fired their blast furnaces with locally produced charcoal, the Wendener Hütte lost out to the developing coal-based steel industry in the Ruhr Area.

[5] With quick access to other areas of Germany, Wenden was able to attract larger operations and build a solid economic infrastructure.

For local public road transport there are many bus lines that also join Wenden with neighbouring communities.