The earliest European settlement in the Bessemer City area dates to 1754, when King George II of Great Britain granted about 2,000 acres (8.1 km2) to James Ormand (1716–1771), who established the Ormand Mining Company to extract iron ore. By 1786, a furnace had been built on the land, called the Washington Furnace after the family of Colonel John C. Washington.

[5] Despite a local tale that cannonballs were made during the Revolutionary War, there is no proof the furnace was built that early.

[5] In 1871, the Atlanta & Charlotte Division of the Richmond & Danville Railroad Company built through Gaston County.

Laying the track through Whetstone Mountain, located west of modern-day Bessemer City, was considered a great engineering accomplishment.

Smith purchased 1,700 acres (6.9 km2) and wanted to establish a town to the east of Whetstone Mountain.

[5] In 1896 Smith built the first luxurious home in the area he named "Long View" where he lived with his wife for nearly 20 years.

A series of textile mills opened by Smith and Pinchback; Durham and Odell; Frank, Robert and Max Goldberg; as well as the Ragan Spinning Company, gave Bessemer City its industrial foundation.

[7] In 1929 Textile mill striker and songwriter Ella Mae Wiggins, 29, the mother of nine, is killed when local vigilantes, thugs and a sheriff's deputy force the pickup truck in which she is riding off the road and begin shooting.

A native of Sevierville, Tennessee, Wiggins by 1926 settled in Gaston County, N.C., living in an African-American neighborhood outside Bessemer City known as Stumptown.

"She became a bookkeeper for the union, which was Communist run, and traveled to Washington, D.C., to testify about labor practices in the South.

I was working nights, I asked the super to put me on days, so’s I could tend ‘em when they had their bad spells.

She also sang her ballads, including her best-known song, "A Mill Mother’s Lament," which has been recorded by Pete Seeger, among others.

They had driven about five miles toward home when they were stopped by a car; armed men jumped out and began shooting.

Five Loray Mill employees were charged in Wiggins's murder but were acquitted after less than 30 minutes of deliberation in a trial in Charlotte in March 1930 despite the fact that the crime was committed in daylight and more than 50 people witnessed it.

The factors that Phyllis Anderson showed the court to demonstrate that the hiring committee was sexists were 1) Ms. Anderson was better qualified, 2) Testimony from one of the committee members that he thought the position would be "real hard" for a woman and that he wouldn't want his wife to perform such duties, 3) Ms. Anderson alone among the applicants was asked whether she realized that the job would involve night work and travel and whether her husband approved of her applying for the job, and 4) The reasons offered by the all-male hiring committee as to why they hired a less qualified man were pretextual.

[citation needed] As of the 2020 United States census, there were 5,428 people, 1,994 households, and 1,363 families residing in the city.

Advanced Drainage Systems, the largest polyethylene pipe and fittings manufacturer in the country, operates a 50,000-square-foot (4,600 m2) facility in Bessemer City employing 100 people.

[15] The Bessemer City Branch of the Gaston County Public Library serves this community.