The history of Bluefield began in the 18th century, when the Davidson and Bailey families settled in a rugged and remote part of what is now southern West Virginia. Others joined them, and they built a small village with a mill, a church, a one-room schoolhouse, and a fort for defending the settlement against invasions by the
Shawnee tribe, which had a village on the banks of the
Bluestone River. In 1882, the descendants of the Davidson and Bailey families sold a portion of their land, when Captain John Fields of the
Norfolk and Western Railway pioneered the area and began building a new railroad through the hills of Bluefield. The city is traditionally thought to be named after the
chicory flowers in the area, which give the fields a purplish blue hue during the summer. Research has shown that this settlement, also known as Higginbotham's Summit in the 1880s, was probably named for the coal fields that were developed in the area of the Bluestone River.
Coal rush Beneath the land of the Davidsons and Baileys lay the largest and richest deposit of
bituminous coal in the world. The first seam was discovered in nearby
Pocahontas, Virginia, in the backyard of Jordan Nelson. President
Frederick Kimball of the
Norfolk and Western Railway described this as the "most spectacular find on the continent and indeed perhaps of the entire planet." The coal seam had been mentioned much earlier in
Thomas Jefferson's
Notes on the State of Virginia, but it was not mined until 1882. Around that time, coal mines were developed in the area around Harman, Bluefield,
War, and
Pocahontas, which together were known as the Pocahontas Coal Fields. They helped support the
Industrial Revolution in the United States. The development of the coal industry in this area created a boom in the local and national economy and attracted immigrant European workers and migrant
African Americans from the
Deep South to the mountains in search of industrial work. In the late 19th century, the Norfolk and Western Railway Company selected Bluefield as the site for a repair center and a major division point, which greatly stimulated the town's growth. It developed as today's
Bluefield State University. Demographics began to shift with the hiring of its first White President, Dr. Hardway, and his closing of dormitories after the 1968 bombing. It is known as "The Whitest Historically Black College in America".
20th century was primarily developed during the 1920s During the 1920s, the 12-story West Virginian Hotel was built. It has been adapted and in the 21st century is operated as the West Virginia Manor and Retirement Home. In 1924, nearby Graham, Virginia, decided to rename itself as
Bluefield to try to unite the two towns, which had been feuding since the Civil War. Nobel Prize-winning economist and mathematician
John Forbes Nash was born in Bluefield in 1928. George Marshall Palmer, the well-renowned Purdue University professor of aeronautics and director of the Aerospace Sciences Laboratory at Purdue, led the invention of the Boeing wind tunnel and was a pioneer in the aerodynamic and structural testing of skyscrapers; he was born in Bluefield in 1921. The
Great Depression was particularly damaging to Bluefield. With the government nearly bankrupt, after a series of devastating structural fires swept through the downtown area, the city was nearly destroyed. Only at the outbreak of World War II did coal production revive. The strategic importance of the city was so great that
Adolf Hitler put Bluefield on his reputed list of German air raid targets in the United States. Air raid practice drills were common in the city during this time. In 1964, Helen Compton opened the now-demolished Shamrock Bar, the oldest gay bar in the state. The
Interstate Highway System was constructed through
East River Mountain on December 20, 1974; for the first time automobile traffic could reach the city without crossing the top of the mountain. The dependence on the railroads waned and restructuring changed the industry. Bluefield lost jobs and population as a result. Its
Amtrak station closed in the 1980s.
Mercer Mall, the area's major shopping mall, opened in 1980. ==Geography==