According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 3.1 square miles (8.0 km2), all of it land.

[7] As of the census of 2020, the town had 2,970 people,[12] roughly 10 percent fewer than two decades earlier.

The airport is located approximately three miles northeast of the central business district.

The Town of Wise has one sister city: In early 1862, Gladeville served as the headquarters of Confederate General Humphrey Marshall, who had been assigned to defend southwest Virginia.

The event is commemorated by a historical marker,[14] and re-enactors engaged in a Civil War Living History Presentation and Re-Enactment on the second weekend of July each year.

[15] Three buildings on Main Street in the town of Wise are on the National Register of Historic Places.

[16] The Colonial Hotel, now known as the Inn at Wise Court House, was added to the Register in 1991.

The Wise County Courthouse was added to the Register ten years earlier, in 1981.