Bluefield has not always bore the name Bluefield. The town was renamed Bluefield in 1924 during a marriage ceremony, which was held in the city park to celebrate the renaming of the community to match its sister city across the West Virginia state line. The original name for the post office in the town was Pin Hook, and as the railroad was being built by Norfolk and Western, a blueprint for a town was laid out around the post office, and the town of Harman was born. Harman was a community whose borders are now roughly the same as the downtown area alongside the railroad. Bluefield, West Virginia beat Harman, Virginia out as the preferred community for the Norfolk and Western railroad to build its regional headquarters and main docking yards for the Pocahontas region. As a result, Bluefield, West Virginia grew at a much faster rate than its neighbor to the west. Harman still held out hope to become a major city in the region - billing itself the "Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaPittsburgh of the Southern United StatesSouth" by its mayor in an effort to attract a steel refining industry alongside the railyards. It is possible that the city may have had a chance to boom, had it not been for the Great Depression, which essentially killed any chance of Harman to grow. Even after the name change in the 1920s, the city did not start to expand outside of the downtown area until the 1950s, when the city annexed the small town of Graham, VirginiaGraham to the west, and then began to expand to the more open rural foothills to the south of the city. Contrary to popular belief, Harman and Graham were two entirely separate towns until Harman changed its name to Bluefield, and then annexed the town of Graham. As the largest town in Tazewell County, Virginia, Bluefield has recently undergone a new wave of growth throughout the 1990s and the first decade of the new millennium. After a series of devastating floods in the past five years, the city is in the process of moving its entire downtown area (the area originally encompassing Harman, which lies in a flood plain) to the southernmost point in the city at the foot of East River Mountain. The area is already booming there - with a Super Wal-Mart and numerous strip malls and a medical center already operating along U.S. Highway 460. The new downtown area will be located on the southern side of Route 460, and should have plenty of expansion room for more growth. Bluefield, Virginia's most famous residents are Bill Dudley, an NFL Hall of Famer whose grand nephew now coaches the city's semi-professional football team, the Bluefield Barons; and the widow of the late western actor Lorne Green, who lives in a mansion atop a hill overlooking the town's most historic home, the Sanders house. The Sanders house was saved from demolition by the Walmart corporation thanks to a strong community effort to save the structure and now houses the Tazewell County Visitors Center. The town was chosen by Hollywood film producers for the 1990s remake of the classic movie, Lassie, and has been mentioned by musicians in numerous songs, including Blessid Union of Souls' "Oh Virginia". Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluefield%2C_Virginia