In 1890, a Swiss-French physician named Alexandre Yersin traveled through what would become Di Linh on his way to survey the Central Highlands. Yersin was on one of his exploratory expeditions into the Vietnamese interior — journeys that would eventually lead him to identify the plateau site where Da Lat was later built. He passed through Djiring nine years before the French formally established their administrative center here, observing a landscape of forested highlands inhabited by indigenous communities little touched by lowland Vietnamese or European influence. Yersin went on to become one of the most celebrated figures in the history of medicine and science in Vietnam, remembered for discovering the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis in 1894 — simultaneously with Kitasato Shibasaburō, though Yersin's identification is generally considered definitive — and for founding what became the Pasteur Institute in Nha Trang in 1895. His passage through Di Linh is a footnote in his biography, but in the district's history it stands as one of the earliest documented encounters between the highlands and the wider world.

The colonial administrative building completed in 1900 still stands at the center of Di Linh, though its original purpose has been superseded many times over. Today it serves as the headquarters of the People's Council of Di Linh district — a building that has housed French administrators, gone through decades of war and reunification, and emerged as a functioning civic institution in a socialist state. That kind of material continuity is more common in Vietnam than visitors sometimes expect. The country has a pragmatic relationship with structures built by those who occupied it: if a building is useful and structurally sound, it continues to be used, regardless of who built it or why. Di Linh district now encompasses the town itself and 18 surrounding communes — Bao Thuan, Dinh Lac, Gung Ré, and others — covering a total of 183 villages and residential groups spread across a diverse terrain of flat basalt plateau and forested mountain slopes.

Di Linh sits at around 900 meters above sea level, a position that gives it a climate unlike either the tropical lowlands or the cooler heights of Da Lat. The average temperature hovers around 22°C year-round — warm enough that sweaters are rarely needed, cool enough that the oppressive heat of Ho Chi Minh City feels like a different country. The town receives 2,616 millimeters of rain per year, most of it concentrated in the wet season between April and November, with October delivering the heaviest falls. January is the driest and sunniest month. This reliable, moderate climate made the district suitable for industrial crop cultivation: the plateau terrain along National Highway 20 supports coffee, tea, and mulberry production, while the steeper southern and southwestern slopes are given over to forestry. Agriculture is not incidental to Di Linh — it is the economic foundation on which the district runs.

Di Linh's geography is its destiny. Situated on National Highway 20 between Bảo Lộc and Da Lat, the town has always been a point of passage. The road is the central artery of the southern Central Highlands, carrying goods, travelers, and commerce between the coast and the plateau. For motorbikers and bus passengers making the journey between Ho Chi Minh City and Da Lat, Di Linh appears at roughly the midpoint — a town with fuel stations, restaurants, and the particular appeal of a highland stop where the air is noticeably cooler and the pace noticeably slower than the cities at either end of the route. Its position between larger destinations means Di Linh is often bypassed, but that passage has also kept it connected, economically active, and aware of the wider world moving through.