The association with the Brontë family, and the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, has drawn many visitors to the area, particularly from Japan.

In the period when Airedale was subject to glaciation, lakes developed in the valleys which held water behind ice sheets.

[8] Since the Middle Ages, sheep farming dominated, especially in the lower parts of the valley floors, and hand-looming became a notable way of earning a second wage.

The area of the Worth Valley is deemed as being "more rural than suburban...[despite being] situated 10 miles (16 km) from the centre of Bradford".

[13] The area of the Worth valley straddles three parish councils: Historically, the township of Haworth was in the wapentake of Agbrigg and Morley.

[17] Around the Oxenhope area are Thornton Moor and Leeming Reservoirs which are major tributaries of Bridgehouse Beck.

[19] A smaller reservoir was built at Sugden End above Cross Roads, but this is now disused, with a view to turning it into a community asset.

[32] Conduits were built by the Bradford Corporation to supply water to their reservoirs at Thornton Moor and Stubden.

The mill owners in the Worth Valley still needed water, so the compensation reservoirs at Leeming and Leeshaw were built.

[41] The millstone grit was heavily worked in the area, with quarries at Dimples, West End, Harehill Edge, Naylor Hill,[42] Dry Clough, Black Moor (Oxenhope),[e] Sugden, Braithwaite, Cuckoo Park Farm, Branshaw Quarry, and Penistone Hill.

[44][45][46] Keighley Bluestone, "a hard, siliceous, bluish grey siltstone with marine fauna," was quarried at Blue Delph on Harehill Edge.

[55][56] At Crow Hill, on the western extremity of the Worth Valley, a bog burst in 1824, which saw the Brontë children having to take shelter in Ponden Hall.

[77] The A6033 is one of the most dangerous roads in the United Kingdom, and was closed for 20 weeks in 2020 to allow for various schemes to improve bends and resurfacing work.

Japan has a "well-populated Brontë Society", so much so, that many of the wooden waymarker signs on Haworth Moor are written in Japanese as well as English.