Qualla: Bluefield, Virginia

Bluefield, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian Stansberry, CC BY 4.0. On June 10, 1924, the town of Graham, Virginia, voted 287 to 223 to change its name. The new name, Bluefield, was the name of the bigger town across the state line in West Virginia — the Norfolk and Western Railway division point that had outgrown Graham by a factor of four in roughly forty years. A few days after the vote, officials of the two towns held a mock wedding ceremony in the city park. Bluefield, Virginia, married Bluefield, West Virginia. The cities still share a baseball stadium, an airport, and the name. They are still separated by a state line that runs roughly along the Bluestone River and the ridge above it.

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Image: Brian Stansberry | CC BY 4.0

Bluefield, Virginia: Pin Hook, Harman, Graham

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian Stansberry, CC BY 4.0. The settlement on the Virginia side started as a post office named Pin Hook in the 1860s, taking its name from a small creek. It was briefly called Harman, for a Confederate captain killed at the Battle of Cloyd's Mountain in Pulaski County in 1864. When coal was discovered in th...

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Image: Brian Stansberry | CC BY 4.0

Bluefield, Virginia: The Wedding of the Bluefields

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Kalasnik from Charlotte, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. By 1924 Graham had about 5,000 residents and Bluefield, West Virginia, had grown to about 22,000. The Graham town leaders proposed adopting the bigger neighbor's name to capture some of its identity and its commercial gravity. The referendum passed 287 to 223 — narrow, but decisi...

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Image: Mike Kalasnik from Charlotte, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bluefield, Virginia: Floods, Walmart, and the Sanders House

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. Through the twentieth century Bluefield, Virginia, remained the smaller twin. It annexed the small town of West Graham in the 1950s. It began developing south of the historic downtown, at the foot of East River Mountain, after repeated 21st-century floods drove the town council c...

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Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Bluefield, Virginia: Bill Dudley, Ahmad Bradshaw, and Bowen Field

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SheepNotGoats at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Bluefield's most famous athlete is Bill Dudley, the Pro Football Hall of Famer who played in the 1940s and 50s and remains one of the smallest players ever inducted at Canton. Ahmad Bradshaw, a two-time Super Bowl champion running back with the New York Giants, also came from Blu...

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Image: SheepNotGoats at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0