Tazewell County

TazewellCounty nurtures a special position in the majestic Appalachian Mountains of southwest Virginia. The Nature Conservancy declared the Clinch River Basin to be one of only twenty “Last Great Places” in the world (1990), and this basin, supporting “…the world’s largest collection of rare and endangered fresh water species,” begins in Tazewell County. The county’s 500+ square miles of hillsides and valleys, streams and rivers, meadows and forests form a largely agricultural land. Home to about 40,000 people, its towns bring you back to the feeling of safer, more relaxed times. It’s a wonderful place to live, raise a family or to retire, and a great place to visit!

www.tazewellcounty.org

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Sites

Tazewell County Visitor Center

200 Sanders Lane, Bluefield, Virginia

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Completed in 1896, the restored Sanders House is now home to the Tazewell County Visitors Center. The large Victorian house features oak woodwork, an original mural, and original Sanders family collections. The property also contains a granary, smokehouse and cottage outbuildings, as well as the relocated historic Bailey House, a pre-Civil War log structure that was home to one of Bluefield’s earliest families.

Crab Orchard Museum and Pioneer Park/Fort Witten

3663 Crab Orchard Road, Tazewell, Virginia

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Crab Orchard Museum presents not only local history but a comprehensive overview of the Appalachian region, with important exhibits on early life, military history, and a natural history section documenting the animals of Southwest Virginia. The museum’s exhibit of Native American artifacts displays the results of excavations at the nearby Crab Orchard site, a large Woodland village. Pioneer Park village includes fourteen log structures that have been reassembled to show what daily life was once like in western Virginia.

Virginia Room at Tazewell County Public Library

Tazewell Historic District, 310 East Main Street, Tazewell, Virginia

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The Tazewell County Public Library’s Virginia Room, located in the Tazewell Historic District, is intended to help visitors discover their family history in this region. The Virginia Room includes about 1500 volumes of published history, biography, records of the census, births, marriages, land transactions, tax assessments, wills, deaths, and cemeteries, newspapers, maps and gazetteers, as well as how-to guides to research.

Wolf Creek Indian Village and Museum

6394 North Scenic Highway, Bastian, Virginia

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Between 1490 and 1530 AD, a small group of Native Americans settled along Wolf Creek in present-day Bland County. They built a circular palisaded village to house as many as 100 people. Excavation of the site in 1970 revealed 14 structures and a wealth of artifacts. The Wolf Creek Indian Village and Museum opened in 1998 to interpret the story of the region’s prehistoric peoples, including a full recreation of the village.