[1] Based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency in 2005, this town has an estimated total population of 10,062 of whom 4,942 were men and 5,120 were women.

While still ruler of Shewa, Menelik II had a ketamma (or fortified camp) built at Were Ilu and Enewari in 1869 to guard his northern frontier and pacify the Wollo Oromo, who were his neighbors.

Writing in the 1890s, Augustus B. Wylde described the Were Ilu market, held on Saturdays, as very large in size, with petty European goods and locally made cloth available;[7] upon visiting its market, he was impressed by the large piles of woolen goods for sale there, declaring that it "may be called the Bradford of Abyssinia".

[8] In 1895 Were Ilu became a supply dump, where the emperor stored about one and a half million cartridges and thousands of guns, as well as setting up numerous granaries,[9] and it served as an organizing point for Menelik's army at the beginning of the First Italo-Abyssinian War.

[11] On 28 March 1990, during the Ethiopian Civil War, an aerial attack on Were Ilu by Derg airplanes destroyed a grain stockpile, but inflicted no casualties.