Lauterbrunnen is a small unspoilt village in Switzerland nestled between the towering walls of a sheer-sided valley that is famed for its waterfalls. Lauterbrunnen is a very small village and easy to get around by walking.

The Lauterbrunnen area is famous for mountainbiking. Rent an Interlaken bike (for eg, there's a rental store at the West station) and ride to the end of the valley the place called Stechelberg. For sFR.20.- take your bike in the gondula up to Mürren. From Mürren follow the red bike trail signs to Winteregg. It is an easy trail for everybody, not much up hill. From Winteregg enjoy a fast downhill to Isenfluh or back to Lauterbrunnen. This tour can also easy be started in Interlaken: it is only 45 minutes more biking, and the round trip from Interlaken needs 3-5 hours. Get your great quality bike maps and all information at rental places in Interlaken.

Hike up to Wengwald by walking up the trail starting beside the townhall. Cross the river and follow the signs to Wengen until you see a sign pointing towards Wengwald. Hike up this way until you get great views of the Lauterbrunnen valley. Takes only 1.5-2 hours if going slowly.

The oldest trace of a settlement in the area is a single Roman coin which was discovered in the Blumental. When the Lauterbrunnen Valley first appears in the historic record, during the 13th century, it was owned by the Freiherr of Wädenswil. In 1240 the Freiherr of Wädenswil sold the Sefinen Valley to Interlaken Abbey. Over the following century, the Abbey and other local lords began to expand their power in the Lauterbrunnen and neighboring valleys. However, around 1300, the Lord of Turn began to settle his Walser speaking people in the nearby Lötschen Valley and into the highlands of the Lauterbrunnen Valley. By 1346, the Walser villages of Lauterbrunnen, Gimmelwald, Mürren, Sichellauenen and Trachsellauenen all had village governments and a certain amount of independence under the Abbey. Three years later, much of the Bernese Oberland unsuccessfully rose up against Abbey. When the Abbey suppressed the rebellion, the Walser villages bore the brunt of the Abbey's wrath.

By the 15th century, the villages of the valley were part of the large parish of Gsteig bei Interlaken (now part of Gsteigwiler). In 1487-88 the villagers in Lauterbrunnen built a filial church of the parish. In 1506, the parish appointed a full-time priest for Lauterbrunnen. In 1528, the city of Bern adopted the new faith of the Protestant Reformation and began imposing it on the Bernese Oberland. Lauterbrunnen joined many other villages and the Abbey in an unsuccessful rebellion against the new faith. After Bern imposed its will on the Oberland, they secularized the Abbey and annexed all the Abbey lands. Lauterbrunnen became the center of a new Reformed parish.

Mines were built in the Trachsellauenen area in the upper valley beginning in the late 16th century. An iron smelter was built in Zweilütschinen (now part of Gündlischwand) in 1715 to process the iron ore from Trachsellauenen. However most of the money from the mines went to the noble landowners. The villagers remained very poor. In the 17th and 18th centuries the poverty was so widespread that many of the villagers joined mercenary regiments or emigrated. A majority of the emigrants moved to the Carolinas in the United States. Beginning in the late 18th century, foreign mountain climbers began to use Lauterbrunnen as a starting point for their expeditions into the nearby Alps. Initially the climbers stayed in the village rectory. However, as Lauterbrunnen's fame grew and with the completion of a road from Interlaken in 1834 and the 1890 Bernese Oberland Railway, more hotels were needed for tourists. 

As new hotels were built, other tourist infrastructure was also built in the village. They built cable cars to Mürren in 1891 and to Wengen in 1893. But the most significant piece of infrastructure was the Jungfrau railway which was built in 1912. The Jungfrau rack railway runs 9 km (5.6 mi) from Kleine Scheidegg to the highest railway station in Europe at Jungfraujoch. The railway runs almost entirely within a tunnel built into the Eiger and Mönch mountains and contains two stations in the middle of the tunnel, where passengers can disembark to observe the neighboring mountains through windows built into the mountainside. In 1909 the English brothers Walter and Arnold Lunn popularized skiing, curling and bobsledding at Lauterbrunnen. These winter sports provided a whole new group of winter tourists and converted the summer tourist industry into a year-round business. The tourist economy of Lauterbrunnen was devastated due to World War I and II and the Great Depression. However, following the end of World War II, tourism rebounded. Many new vacation homes and chalets were built along with ski lifts, chair lifts and a heliport.