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About Bluefield, WV

The European-American history of Bluefield began in the 18th century, when two 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 Indian tribe, which had a village on the banks of the Bluestone River. In 1882, the descendants of the Davidson and Bailey family 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.