A history of Bluefield,
then and now
Postcards, papers and photographs of Bluefield from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗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.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Bluefield’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
2 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewRev. William Hullihen Burkhardt, 1892: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Bluefield
See all 30 →
Bluefield, decade by decade
![B.E. view of Bluefields [sic], W. Va](https://images.towntapestry.org/story/18754/9869bf15da0180964398-s.jpg)
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Rev. William Hullihen Burkhardt (1892) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (3) and the Library of Congress (3). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.